Najnowsze przekłady Biblii a teoria przekładu

Abstract

New translations of the Bible may suffer from the fact that sometimes translators who need to demonstrate that their renditions are really new, have a tendency to introduce new versions at any price, which may result either in fancy, less satisfactory solutions, or in mistakes. Only some of the radical experiments are successful. Biblical scholars and translators should keep in mind that the same original can be, by definition, translated in many equally satisfactory ways, so that new translations are frequently only parallel and equivalent to the older versions. Literal or ‘word by word’ rendition, which still reappears in its radical execution, when there is an attempt at imitating grammatical structures of the original language, inevitably results in unfaithful interpretations in which some crucial meanings and style features are lost. A non-literal translation can be equivalent or ‘faithful’, but a literal translation cannot be faithful by definition. In a moderate version, literal translation can be used for metalinguistic discussions only. The use of brackets for words or phrases without which the translation is incomprehensible or grammatically and/or stylistically distorted, should be abandoned. Real etymological meanings of words are by definition obsolete and anachronistic, and should be used with utmost caution.