To conceal or reveal?: self-censorship and explicitation in the ancient bible versions
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Date
2018-01
Authors
Mangum, Douglas Todd
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
This study explores Biblical Hebrew figures of speech and their translations in the ancient
Bible versions in Greek (the Septuagint), Syriac (the Peshitta), and Aramaic (the Targums).
The research is grounded in the methodologies of Translation Studies and linguistics —
with Translation Studies providing the theoretical basis for describing translation and
linguistics providing the theoretical basis for analysing figures of speech and their
construal by ancient translators. The research question is: how did ancient Bible translators
respond to Biblical Hebrew figures of speech, especially when those figures of speech were
used for mitigating taboo topics like blasphemy or bodily functions?
Since figurative language requires the translator to make a decision about what the
figure of speech was meant to communicate, it was hypothesised that the translators’ strategies
related to figures of speech might provide insights into their decision-making process. Figures
of speech that are used to conceal taboo topics are euphemisms, so the primary focus of analysis
was on Biblical Hebrew euphemisms and their translation. While the sociocultural importance
of taboo subjects increases the likelihood of the translator’s intervention in suppressing content
(self-censorship), this study also addressed figures of speech from neutral, or non-taboo, subject
areas in order to establish a standard of comparison for how the versions handled the implicit
meaning of figurative language when the stakes were not as high as with a sensitive topic. The
opaque meaning of figurative expressions also provides an opportunity for a translator to
intervene to make the meaning explicit to the audience (explicitation).
The major finding of the study is that while literal translation is the predominant
approach to translating figures of speech in all the ancient versions, the versions also used
figurative language to translate figures of speech from their source text far more than was
expected based on the hypothesis that the ancient versions are highly literal and rarely engage
in substitution of one figure of speech for another. This assumption that the versions did not
make significant use of idiomatic or figurative substitution was not supported by the evidence
analysed in this study. The significant number of blended (literal and figurative) renderings and
figurative renderings indicates at least some translators of the ancient versions possessed a more
sophisticated understanding of translation and were capable of varying their strategies to bring
the text closer to the natural language of their audiences, even if their default mode was to
translate literally. Further, it was found that figurative language in the area of euphemism
carried over between languages at a greater degree than anticipated. A translation that appeared to be strictly literal because it used a word from the same semantic, conceptual domain as the
source could in fact be figurative because the target language had developed the same figure of
speech through the same processes of semantic extension (i.e., metaphor or metonymy).
Overall, it was shown that the ancient translators were capable of more interpretive renderings
that reoriented Biblical Hebrew idiomatic phrases toward the expectations of the audience of
the translation. With taboo topics, there can be a wide range of acceptability norms. The varying
strategies used in the ancient versions with euphemistic figures of speech likely reflect an
awareness of what was acceptable to the target audience.
Description
Keywords
Translation studies, Bible translation, Biblical Hebrew, Hebrew Bible, Targum, Peshitta, Figurative language, Euphemism, Translation technique, Thesis (D.Phil. (Hebrew))--University of the Free State, 2018