Cultural Appropriation in Bible Translation

Appropriating cultures is an ideological move that has been employed in varying degrees in translations (c.f. Knight 2002 and Fernández 2013). However, its overwhelming application in Bible translation is remarkable, a practice that could be attributed to the status of Bible translations in Christianity. In Christianity, translations of the Bible into any language have the same status as sacred, irrespective of the source text from which they are made, or the strategies adopted. This is different from what obtains in the translation of the Quran and the Hebrew Bible in Islam and Judaism respectively. In Islam, for instance, only the original Arabic version of the Quran is considered sacred. While converts to Christianity are not required to read the Bible in its original languages of Hebrew and Greek, the situation is different in Islam, as illustrated by Stine (2004: 14):

Converts to Islam, whatever their culture or language, must learn to read and recite the Qur’an in Arabic, even if they do not understand what they are learning. The entire theological vocabulary, including the divine name, is in a foreign language.

The Qur’an in other languages is not perceived as being equally sacred as the Arabic version. Stine (2004) observes that this stance of Islam alienates converts in a way, as enunciated in the following narrative:

A number of years ago in Mali, a young man, a former Muslim, recounted his conversion to Christianity. He had been selected to undertake university studies in Russia, and on one leg of the trip to Moscow he found himself sitting with two native Arabic speakers. Eager to impress them with his

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devotion, he recited for them prayers he had learned in the Qur’anic schools.

Totally unable to understand his Arabic, the two native speakers told him that he was pronouncing the words of the prayers and Scriptures incorrectly.

The student arrived in Moscow with his faith shattered, for he had always been taught that Allah would hear him only if the pronunciation were correct. All the prayers he had recited over the years had therefore been in vain! (Stine 2004: 14 – 15)

The Christian convert is not subjected to such an experience. Similarly, in Judaism, translations of the Torah are perceived only as “aids to comprehension” and are not supposed to be used as texts in their own right (Mühleisen 2009: 467). In contrast to this, the Bible in whatever language it is translated into is accorded equal status as sacred.

This position of Bible translation in Christianity could in turn be traced to the beginning of Christianity as a religion, where translation played a significant role. In the first place, Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, but the Gospels were first written in Greek, which indicates that the sayings of Jesus were written in translation. Secondly, as noted in Oyali (2016: 160fn), the texts of the OT (originally written in Hebrew) freely quoted in the NT (originally written in Greek) were quoted in translation. Hence, Christianity is described by Stine (2004: 14) as a “translated religion”, which, by implication, means that “it must be translatable”. Stine (2004: 14) adds that

Christians do not turn to Bethlehem or Jerusalem for spiritual guidance. They do not have to learn new terms for spiritual and theological concepts.

Instead, vernacular translations of the Bible have adopted indigenous terms, concepts, and customs.

This indigenization apparently hinges on the belief by early Christians that God is not partial against any linguistic or cultural group, for “the ‘many tongues’ of Pentecost demonstrate that God accepts all cultures within the scheme of salvation” (Sanneh 2009:

53). Consequently,

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Christianity broke free from its exclusive Judaic frame and, taking a radical turn, it adopted Hellenic culture to the point of complete assimilation.

Christian thought was Greek thought. In the expansion of mission beyond Rome and Byzantium, we find evidence of how that cultural captivity was challenged. (Sanneh 2009: 56)

Christian beliefs and teachings are thus introduced into other cultures by appropriating aspects of the receiving cultures.

Whereas the practice of cultural appropriation in Bible translation predates Nida (1964), his concept of dynamic equivalence nonetheless seems to have given it more impetus. Stine (2004) observes that Bible translation before Nida (1964) tilted more towards literalism, such that the translations conformed closely to the form of Hebrew or Greek or the European language from which it was translated. This made the Bible difficult to understand, as “[p]reachers spent entire sermons explaining the meaning of the Biblical texts. Access to the Bible was therefore still limited to those who had received some biblical or theological training, most often from missionaries” (Stine 2009: 26). However, the situation has changed since Nida’s (1964) introduction of functional equivalence.

A key outcome of cultural appropriation in Bible translations is that it makes the message of the Bible no longer appear foreign to the receptor culture. Stine (2004: 13) attributes the dying out of Christianity in North Africa and Nubia and its survival and flourish in Egypt and Ethiopia to the existence of Bible translations in the indigenous languages of the latter and the absence of such in the former. Sanneh (2009) cites the case of Carthage in present-day Tunisia whose population was exposed to Christianity. The Christian priests and bishops learnt Punic, the indigenous language of Carthage in order to evangelize to the population. However, the Bible was not translated into Punic, which had some negative consequences for the survival of Christianity in the community as outlined below by Sanneh (2009: 78):

[the failure] to produce a Punic version of the Bible was an ill omen for the church in North Africa, for it left the indigenous population excluded from

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any meaningful role in Christianity […] Without the native Scriptures, the local populations considered the church to be an instrument of foreign domination and were as a result alienated from the Romanized Christians.

When Islam spread into the region in the seventh century, it encountered only the echo of a long-spent force, which it proceeded swiftly to put to rout.

Tied to this is the improved prestige a language acquires when the Bible is translated into it. The Bible is seen as the word of God and making a language to convey God’s word evokes some pride in the speakers. Bible translation thus becomes a marker of identity and pride.

Harrison (2015: vii) cites the case of Mokilese, whose speakers could all speak a sister language, Pohnpeian. However, they desire a Bible in their language, which, in Harrison’s (2015: viii) words, “will bring prestige and respect for Mokilese, both within the community and without”. Beerle-Moor and Voinov (2015: 10) also cite the case of languages in Brazil and Papua New Guinea that were on the brink of extinction until the Bible was translated into them. Consequently, “coming to believe the message of the Bible improved the dignity and self-esteem of the language bearers, many of whom had previously been subject to a poor self-image due to denigration by majority ethnic groups surrounding them” (Beerle-Moor and Voinov 2015: 10).

Although translating the Bible into Igbo may not have been an effort to improve the prestige of the language per se, the appropriation of concepts from Igbo traditional religious practices gives the impression that the Christian concepts so represented in Igbo were an integral part of the Igbo cultural practices. Thus, Christianity is no longer perceived as a foreign religion, and Christian values now expressed in Igbo are inadvertently perceived as part of the Igbo cosmology prior to the advent of Christian missionaries. As demonstrated in Chapters 5 and 7, the pejorative meaning given to an Igbo heroic and trickster deity Ekwensu in its use to represent the Christian Devil resulted in many families that bore Ekwensu as surname changing their name, while communities and schools named after the deity were also renamed. The point is that the pejorative associations of the deity in its use to represent a negative Christian deity has changed the Igbo perception of the cultural icon. The Christian appropriation of Ekwensu is now the

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prevailing conceptualization of the deity in Igbo. The fact that a whole clan would change the name of the clan is an indication that Christians and non-Christian’s alike now conceptualize Ekwensu in a negative light, thereby making the erstwhile Christian concept of Devil an integral part of the Igbo culture.

2.3.1 Cultural Appropriation and Directness of Translation

The degree of cultural appropriation in Bible translations becomes heightened when it is considered that most translations of the Bible in modern times are not done directly from the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek, but from intermediate languages like English, French, Latin, among others. This is called “indirect translation”, defined in Alvstad and Rosa (2015:19) as “a translation resorting to intermediate texts in a language other than the source or target languages”. Incidentally, this practice of translating translations of the Bible is also not a recent trend. Gabel and Wheeler (2013: 226 - 227) observe that the Septuagint, a rendering of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, became “the source from which the earliest Latin versions of the OT were made, and it was a strong influence on the Latin version produced by Jerome in the fourth century A.D.” The Latin versions in turn became the source text from which translations into many European languages were made, e.g., Luther’s translation into German was done from the Latin version. Interestingly, as shown in the next chapter, all the Igbo Bible translations were made mainly from English based source texts.

The implication of this is that the more intermediate versions there are between the original Bible manuscripts and a modern-day translation, the more striking the level of appropriation involved. Although this study is not concerned with the theology of the translations, or with the quality of the translations, it suffices to mention that the fact that many Bible translations into African languages have been indirect translations has been a source of concern in some quarters. For example, Mojola (2004: iii) insists that “African languages and cultures are closer to the cultures of the ancient Biblical worlds than are, for

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example, European languages and cultures”. Consequently, “basing an African translation [of the Bible] on a European version is likely to introduce more translational difficulties and distortions than would result by working from the original source-text”. Two illustrations would suffice here. Firstly, Forster (1958: 17) observes that the Biblical Greeks and Romans would normally recline at table while eating, but 17^th century French translators of the Bible made them sit at table instead. The KJB also used “sit at table” (c.f.

John 12: 2). The point is that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, people sat at table (Forster 1958: 18). Consequently, since their source texts were not texts in the original Biblical languages, but English-based translations, it is not surprising that all the translations into Igbo use Igbo equivalents of “sit at table” as well. Secondly, the expression

“summer and winter” in the KJB evokes images of two of the four seasons experienced in temperate Western Europe. Thus, an unsuspecting reader would interpret it that Biblical Israel also had the four seasons of Europe. However, Israel has only two seasons (Esposito 2015: 18). Because of this, the translators of the Bible into Igbo apparently had the four seasons in Europe in mind when they translated “summer” and “winter” into the tropical Igbo culture (c.f. Section 4.1.1.5).