Views of orality and the translation of the Bible

Abstract

This article presents an overview of constructions of orality that played an important role in the theory and practice of modern Bible translation. Three distinct perspectives can be distinguished. First we have the constructions of orality as articulated by Buber and Rosenzweig in the Interbellum period, a view of orality embedded in ideologies and patterns of thinking of nineteenth-century Germany. The second perspective focuses on universalist and dichotomous constructions of orality, informed by mid-twentieth-century linguistics, anthropology and philology that strictly separated, isolated and contrasted oral and written communication. The third perspective has roots in developments in late twentieth-century biblical scholarship and linguistics. It rejects the universal dichotomies of the preceding period as pseudo-universal and empirically false and emphasizes two things, the interconnectedness of oral and written dimensions and the local nature of oral–written interfaces in different linguistic, cultural and historical conditions.

Keywords:

• orality
• Bible translation
• oral–written interfaces
• translation history
• oral versus literate cultures

Note on contributor

Lourens de Vries is professor of general linguistics in the Faculty of Humanities and professor of Bible Translation in the Faculty of Theology at VU University in Amsterdam. His research interests include the anthropological and descriptive linguistics of New Guinea, linguistic aspects of Bible translation processes, the application of skopos approaches to Bible translation and the history of Bible translation, especially in Asian contexts.

Notes

1. This section relies heavily on de Vries (2012, 87–93; 2014).

2. To use a characteristic phrase of Schleiermacher (1838, 277), quoted by Venuti (2008, 85), who also gives the translation by Lefevere (1977), “bent towards a foreign likeness”.

3. This sentence exemplifies the very peculiar form of German that Buber and Rosenzweig used, often ungrammatical and with neologisms – very difficult to translate into English. A rather literal rendering would be: “A person, when he from among you brings-near to HIM a near-ing”.

4. This section relies heavily on de Vries (2003).

5. I rely on Foley (1997, 417–434) for the origin of the properties ascribed to orality in the second perspective.

6. This section relies heavily on de Vries (2012).

7. This section is based on de Vries (2012, 71–79).

8. This does not mean silent reading was unknown; it was known but not the default way to perform a text. See Carr (2005, 4) for the emergence of silent reading and more visually oriented reader-friendly teaching texts for use in early education in the Hellenistic period when literacy became more widespread.

9. This section is based on de Vries (2012, 79–82).