From: John M. Tait (jmtait@jmt.prestel.co.uk)
Date: Thu Dec 03 1998 - 18:47:04 EST
Edgar Krentz wrote:
>2. More challenging--and disheartening--was the major presentation by Bruce
>M. Metzger on "Preparing the Next Generation of Translators."
>
>It was quite a Jeremiad. He began with Hanson and Heath's Who Killed Homer,
>a recent attack on the mores of classicists. That led him to give
>statistics about the decline of Greek in HS and University teaching. The
>University of Aberdeen abolished the classics departments under Margaret
>Thatcher. The University of Saskatchewam [spelling?] is doing it at the
>present time.
As an Aberdeen graduate, I was interested to see this - it seems rather odd
to see Aberdeen being cited at a lecture in Orlando! I wonder if this is
because it is exceptional in having its classics department abolished - I
don't know what the situation is in other Scottish universities - or
because it is representative of a general trend. (In fact it was not only
classics that got the order of the boot at this time - two of my first year
subjects, Swedish and my eventual honours subject Religious Studies, also
got the heave-ho, as well as I think all the small language departments.)
At the time I saw this as the effect of a government policy to upgrade
polytechnics to universities by the simple expedient of downgrading
universities to polytechnics. I well remember a government minister at the
time justifying cuts in higher education by saying that they were taking
money away from the sort of people who were writing about the customs of
indigenous people in foreign countries (my paraphrase) not anyone who was
doing anything useful - in other words, nothing without direct pecuniary
benefits is useful. Sort of Greekless in the Gazophulakion (I hope awful
puns aren't taboo on this list!) I'm not aware that the situation has
improved.
>
>Then he asked, "How can we stem the decline? And how prepare the next
>generation of translators?" Where is textual criticism being taught? And
>who knows any languages other than Greek needed for TC?
>
>Years ago, when the RSV was done, the director of the translation team had
>learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in HS! Translation of the NT demands
>scholars who know the spread of the Greek language from Homer on! [That is
>Metzger talking, not Ed Krentz--though I share his opinion!] We need
>enthusiasm for learning the language, but where can such translators be
>prepared?
>
>In the discussion I noted that we needed to identify classicists who are
>also committed Christians. I mentioned Herbert Howe, Episcopalian who
>teaches [or taught] at the University of Wisconsin, Roger Bagnall, Lutheran
>at Columbia University and premier papyrologist, Carl Conrad, etc.
>Classicists are recovering the reading of the NT in Greek as part of the
>early Roman Empire's history and culture.
>
>Carl Conrad has cited the Italian proverb on this list, "Traditore
>tradutore," Translators are traitors. That is complicated a great deal when
>the translators do not know the original language well--and are also not
>sensitive to the target language. I learn that over again each week as I
>read with seminary students next Sunday's NT lessons from the three year
>lectionary cycle in Greek and translate.
>
>I will be interested in reactions from the list members to Metzger's
>remarks (recovered from my sketchy notes] and my own interpretive editorial
>comments.
Certainly the old pattern in Scotland - where Divinity was normally a
second degree, and Biblical scholars had typically done their first degree
in Classics - has substantially broken down. Even for run of the mill
readers of the Greek NT like myself, the advantage of having learnt Greek
in school is enormous. When I was doing Religious Studies I was conscious
of how much easier I found the Greek NT than most divines who had only
begun to learn it as part of their divinity course - and my Greek was by no
means up to the standards of Classical students (it's worse now!). Now no
one can gain even this small advantage, because by and large Greek isn't
taught in schools. This will not effect only translation, but also general
interest and competence in the Greek NT among ministers, which can't be a
good thing.
Are we talking here mainly about translators of future English editions of
the Bible, or translators of the Bible into indigenous languages? One of my
interests is translating scripture into my native Shetlandic - which I
would regard as functionally parallel to translation into any indigenous
language - and I can't say that I find the lack of a classical education,
let alone a lack of Syriac and Coptic, to be a handicap at this level.
Generally I find that sensible judgements can be made on the basis of a
working knowledge of Greek - in Mark, for example, with the help of C.E.B.
Cranfield and V. Taylor. Most of the difficulties are concerned with
transferring the meaning into living idiom in the target language.
On the other hand, if we are talking about future translators into English,
is the same pessimism not even more pertinent with regard to future
scholars in general (I assume that most members of translation teams for
English versions are scholars)? If there are no readers of Greek competent
enough to translate the NT into native languages without help, will there
be future C.E.B. Cranfields and V. Taylors to redress their deficiencies?
Or - to return to another subject - will they have to rely on the
Translator's New Testament? There would certainly seem to be a disturbing
gap between a translation which relies on such a source - with the
questionable readings which Ward and I were discussing - and the exacting
scholarship demanded for English versions.
John M. Tait.
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