The New Testament

Most people who read the NT do so in translation (Boase-Beier & Holman, 1999:3), a point further considered in 4.5.1. To recognise that the NT is a translation and to look at the HG of its first-century writers is to investigate the stylistic and lexical choices made by these writers, which may indicate that opportunities open to them are not open to a writer of contemporary English, French, German etc. Julian Barnes (2012:np), reviewing translations of Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, points out that English grammar is not French grammar, which seems an obvious enough remark, but one that, he claims, has escaped a recent translator of Flaubert, Lydia Davis, who imports a clunkiness to her version that is not in the ST by trying to imitate French grammar in her rendering. Noting the differences between languages is an essential task of the translator. Jakobson (1959:236), for example, asserts that languages differ not in what they may say but in what they must say, which is supported by the insistence in the PI that meaning is on the surface, that we should look at the form of what is said etc.

The NT is a collection of 27 texts written in the first century and accepted as canonical by most Christians. Can a Wittgensteinian reading, which puts the ST first,

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shed any light on a work that has been studied intensely for two thousand years? To put the ST first involves acknowledging that it lacks any easy categorisation. The Gospels (traditionally ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), for example, which tell the life of Jesus, are not biographies in the contemporary sense of the word: Mark omits material that would be expected in a contemporary biography, such as any description of Jesus or details of his life before his ministry. There has been a recent trend in scholarship, however, to read the NT as literature, and this would fit in, I think, with a Wittgensteinian stress on the primacy of practice and of use. Thus the Gospels do fit the criteria of first-century Greek and Roman lives that combine ‘folklore, gossip, praise and literary invention’ (Keefer, 2008:19). We can bring a literary reading to the NT, which would allow readers ‘to understand content through close engagement with form’ (Keefer, 2008:7), to be part of the text, to engage with it, to use it to change his or her mind or life. A grammatical investigation of Mark, for example, can show how the style is integral to the presentation. Keefer (2008:29) notes that Mark presents Jesus as a lonely and misunderstood figure, an enigmatic portrait supported by the ‘sparseness of the narrative’, so that in ‘the same way that the narrative isolates the character of Jesus, thus also the syntax of the Gospel isolates the reader’. An instance of this is the iconic way that chapters 8, 9 and 10 of Mark all end with a prediction by Jesus that he must suffer and die, a prediction that the disciples meet with incomprehension, making the reader ask himself or herself if he or she is prepared to follow Jesus no matter what it takes.

Looking at how the ST uses words can enable us to see how an author has chosen to write in a particular way in order to create a particular effect. In Mark 9:2, for example, a past occurrence is described in the present tense. The ST is given as (55).

(55)

Καὶ μετὰ ἡμέρας ἓξ παραλαμβάνει ὁ Ἰησοῦς Kai meta hêmeras hex paralambanei ho Iesous and after days six takes-away the Jesus

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The use of the present tense heightens the tension for dramatic effect. Jesus interrupts his journey, in order to take three of the disciples up a high mountain. It seems that something significant will happen, especially as the Old Testament frequently sets important events on mountains, such as Moses receiving the Covenant from God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:20). In Mark, Jesus will be transfigured before his disciples. Most translations of this episode (e.g. the New Jerusalem Bible) choose to use the past tense for rendering the text, but Nick King (2004) uses the simple present, maintaining the note of the unexpected: ‘And six days later Jesus takes aside …’

I use texts (56) and (57) to show how surface grammar relates to depth grammar, following PI 664. The texts represent John 20:27 and John 21:19 respectively.

(56)

Φ

έρε τὴν χεῖρά σου καὶ βάλε εἰς τὴν πλευράν μου Phere tên cheira sou kai bale eis tên pleuran mou take the hand of-you and place into the side of-me

(57)

Ἀκολούθει μοι. Akolouthei moi. be-following to- me

The aorist imperatives in (56) indicate that a single action is commanded: Jesus demands that Thomas should place his hand into his side on this occasion only. The present imperative in (57) indicates that an ongoing action is commanded: Jesus commands Peter to follow him forever, not just for the next few minutes. To look at the grammar of the ST in this way is useful for the translator, who can see how the meaning of the HG depends on the use, viewing each sentence as an instrument ‘and its sense as its employment’ (PI 421). By analysing the grammatical choices made by ST authors, by working out why an author made a particular choice, a way in to a translation can be found as a translator writes commands in his or her TL that would maintain the distinction.

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Text (58) represents Mark 1:15 and shows how the choice of lexis instantiates meaning.

(58)

μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ. metanoiete kai pisteuete en tô euangeliô. repent and believe in the good-news

The initial verb, μετανοέω [metanoeô] (‘I repent’) in the present active imperative indicative, second person plural, has the implication of turning round one’s entire life, not simply giving up sweets for Lent. In translating this term, therefore, a translator might choose to find ways of maintaining the radical nature of the message preached, as in the rendering in Die Bibel in gerechter Sprache (The Bible in Just Language) (2006), cited as (59).

(59)

Kehrt zum Leben um und vertraut dem Evangelium! turn to-the life round and trust to-the gospel

The notion of turning one’s life round is maintained and faith is construed as trust rather than assent, though the noun ‘Evangelium’ retains a scholastic rather than an everyday connotation.

Text (60) is the description of Jesus’s death by crucifixion in John 19:30.28 I use the analysis by University of London BD examiners (2004:13) in my discussion.

(60)

ὅτε οὖν ἔλαβεν τὸ ὄξος [ὁ] Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν, Τετέλεσται: hote oun elaben to oxos [ho] Iesous eipen, Tetelestai:

when therefore received the vinegar [the] Jesus he-said it-has-been-finished καὶ κλίνας τὴν κεφαλὴν παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα.

kai klinas tên kephalên paredôken to pneuma. and reclining the head he-gave-up the spirit

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The surface grammar is a simple narrative account of four actions: Jesus drank vinegar that had been offered to him by a Roman soldier; he said that it was over; he bowed his head; he died. My translation in (61) therefore seems to be satisfactory, because it represents these actions.

(61)

So when Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said: ‘It is finished’. And, bowing his head, he died.

Or should the final clause be translated as ‘he gave up the ghost’, in order to retain the Greek idiom (which has become a standard if now somewhat archaic – and potentially facetious – form in English, because it was the rendering of this expression by the translators of the King James Bible)? The question seems to be one of stylistic choice and nothing more.

Attention to the way in which the Greek is written, however, shows that other factors have not been taken into account in this reading, i.e. the implications of the verbs ‘Τετέλεσται’ [tetelestai] and ‘παρέδωκεν’ [paredôken]. The first verb often has a purposive sense, a sense of fulfilment, consonant with the stress throughout the whole Gospel on how Jesus, as Word of God, is in control of events. The second verb can also mean ‘hand over’, so that Jesus could be said here to be handing over the Holy Spirit to the Church. The Examiners (2004:13) comment that this understanding of John’s words ‘is not necessarily refuted by the observation that Jesus gave the Spirit only at Easter (John 20:22), since John tends to merge Jesus’s death and glorification’. It is a question of reading the text with a view to the form of life that produced it, what King (2004:12) calls ‘the kind of life that lurks beneath the text of the NT’. (King has told me in personal correspondence that he believes a reading of Wittgenstein has influenced his approach to translation.) His rendering of this verse brings out the theological implications and is given as text (62) and enables the reader to construct the depth grammar beneath the surface grammar.

(62)

And when he had taken the vinegar, Jesus said, ‘It is perfected’. And inclining his head, he handed over the Spirit.

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In PI 373, Wittgenstein notes: ‘Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)’ By reading the NT grammatically, we encounter its theology, which may allow in turn the theology to be translated.

101 2.6 Conclusions

‘How should I translate?’ The correct answer to this question is to point out that translation is a practice and that this practice begins with reading, i.e. reading for translation. If Berger (1977:8) is right to assert that what we see is affected by what we know, then it follows that a knowledge of Wittgenstein will enable a reader to see the text as physiognomy and to be freed from the (possibly unconscious) paradigm of decoding. In the Big Typescript (BT) p.314, Wittgenstein notes that we encounter philosophical problems in practical life when we are guided by ‘certain analogies within language’, rather than by practical purpose, an insight that supports work by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson on cognitive metaphor showing how certain cognitive metaphors can mislead us into thinking that meaning has an existence independent of words, as in the container metaphor: when somebody says, for example, that it is difficult to put his or her thoughts into words (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003:11). False analogies are embedded in our language.

That it is possible to link Wittgenstein to theorists such as Lakoff and Johnson strengthens the case for looking at his work. Wittgenstein supports and is supported by relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995), for example, where the stress on reading the mind of the speaker parallels Wittgenstein’s notion of the form of life. Similarly, Michael Burke (2003) uses the concept of the cognitive scenario (following Lakoff, 1987) as a tool to facilitate the understanding of love poetry, giving the example of the pub (after Stockwell, 2002:77). Most people know the sort of things to expect when they enter a pub: drinks and food for sale; quiz machines; tables at which to sit; a bar etc. Somebody is unlikely to be surprised to hear that a pub is serving food, but might be very surprised to be told that food is being served by a dog, because this is not typically part of the cognitive scenario outside a joke or a fantasy narrative. Similarly, a number of features might be expected by the reader who opens a volume of love poetry: the intense expression of emotion; the use of metaphor; the use of the first person singular etc. Wittgenstein’s methods offer a link to the cognitive scenario, a short-cut for getting there, a set of methods for describing it. The attentive reader of the PI is offered tools to allow him or her to become adept at seeing what is instantiated in a literary text, at becoming at home there. For the translator, this means to be in a better position to translate, by seeing the text’s physiognomy and responding to it, just as one might note differences between a German pub and an English pub.

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My claim is not that a reading of Wittgenstein will produce perfect translators and perfect translations. Any such claim would view translation as a scientific procedure analogous to propositional calculus, a view alien to the spirit of the later Wittgenstein. Pilkington (2000:49) asserts that there is no single theory or method that can unlock a meaning within literary texts, so that they can be read correctly by the reader who happens to have come across that theory or method. If that were the case, then the vast majority of readers would have no hope of ever understanding literature. Pilkington’s view is correct because the concept of a hidden meaning in a text, waiting to be unlocked, is a chimera, as shown by my reading of Wittgenstein. To use Wittgenstein is a philosophical way of describing the process of reading for translation. There are other ways available: the sociological; the cognitive; the literary; the psychological etc. And any way of describing a process is bound in turn to become part of that process. Boase-Beier (2006b:147) argues that knowledge of a theory can be ‘a pair of spectacles through which we see the world differently’, quoting the philosopher Mary Midgeley (2001:26).

Wittgenstein, in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (RPP) I 94, similarly recommends the need for ‘new conceptual glasses’ in order to see with clarity. The tools in the PI can provide such glasses, which is not to suggest that to use Wittgenstein is necessary for literary translation. The number of acclaimed literary translations written before the publication of the PI in 1953 is sufficient to dismiss that notion. My claim is rather that the story told by Wittgenstein in his later work is too important for the reflective practitioner of translation to ignore, because he offers a perspective on language that can enable the task of reading for translation to be approached with clarity: ‘the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity’ (PI 133).

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3. WRITING THE TARGET TEXT

In the elder days of art

Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the Gods see everywhere.

In document Translation after Wittgenstein (Page 95-103)