Journal of Translation
Issue 6(1)
Journal of Translation 6(1) (2010)
Editor's Comments
by David Frank
We have three excellent articles in this issue of the Journal of Translation. The first, by Fritz Goerling, examines the translation of the concept “blessing/to bless” into Manding languages of West Africa. If Hebrew baraka is translated the way some of the academic literature suggests, the wrong message can result, but if the term is translated correctly, it can serve as a bridge for crossing from one culture to another. The article by Michael Walrod and Jamin Pelkey addresses the metaphorical nature of translation by...
This article examines the translation of the different contextual senses and functions of the biblical concept of "blessing/to bless" in six Bible translations and in a translation of the Qur‘an in closely related Manding languages (from Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Burkina-Faso). Most of the qur'anic terms chosen in these arabicized languages to render divine blessing are either inappropriate or inaccurate. They are presented here with the hope of helping other translators, especially those working among groups with significant borrowings from Islamic theological terminology, by sensitizing them...
This paper lights a torch at the dual flame of Paul Ricoeur‘s interaction theory of meaning and Northrop Frye‘s centripetal theory of meaning to shed light on the little discussed implications of "four-syllable elaborate expressions"—polyfunctional poetic phrases that frequently surface both in Chinese discourse and in various translations of the Chinese Bible. The term "emergent text-level meaning" (Walrod 2007) describes the gestalt semantics of a given text which, much like consciousness, cannot be reduced to the sum of its conventionally defined parts. Four-syllable elaborate expressions...
In this exposition I seek to provide a theoretical background to support the notion of "frames of reference" as used in contemporary Bible translation studies. I begin by presenting an overview of "frames" from the perspective of various linguistic and literary scholars as well as a number of experts in the field of communication technology. This leads to my own development of the frames approach through a specification into ten "mini-frames" that may be used in the analysis of biblical (and other) texts. I further elaborate this concept in the area of figurative language by means of the...