The Retranslation Hypothesis

The phenomenon of having subsequent translations of the Bible in one language because of the changes that have happened in the language or for ideological reasons is part of what is generally categorized in translation research as retranslations. I find the Retranslation Hypothesis (RH henceforth) very useful in the analysis of Bible translation and language elaboration carried out in this study. Before I discuss the thrust of the hypothesis, I would first clarify the notion of retranslation, especially considering the dynamics of Bible translations generally, and Bible translations into Igbo in particular.

Koskinen and Paloposki (2010) distinguish between retranslation as a product and retranslation as a process. As a product, retranslation “denotes a second or later translation of a single source text into the same target language” (Koskinen and Paloposki 2010: 294).

As discussed in Section 2.1, the idea of “a single source text” is problematic in the case of Bible translation. Gabel and Wheeler (1986: 236) put it directly thus: “there is no such thing as a universally agreed-on text of the Bible to translate from”. Indeed, there were many manuscripts of portions of the Bible existing with minor and major differences amongst them. However, there is a body of texts generally accepted as constituting the Christian Bible today. The fact that translations of the Bible have equal sacred status in

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Christianity and that many translations of the Bible are translations of translations make the idea of a single source text in Bible translation less important. As a process, retranslation is “prototypically a phenomenon that occurs over a period of time, but in practice, simultaneous or near-simultaneous translations also exist, making it sometimes hard or impossible to classify one as a first translation and the other as a second translation” (Koskinen and Paloposki 2010: 294). This is also problematic in relation to Bible translation as a translation published before another translation does not necessarily mean that the project of the first published translation was started before the second one.

The case of the IRE and the ICB discussed in the next chapter is illustrative. Although the IRE project started in the 1960s, the complete translation was published in 2007.

Meanwhile, the ICB project that was started in 1991 was completed and published in 2000, seven years before the publication of the IRE.

It is often assumed that different translations of a given text are independent of one another. However, according to Koskinen and Paloposki (2015: 25), “a close reading of individual examples of first and subsequent translations soon reveals that there are often subtle links between them”. The point is that the subsequent translations are usually made in reaction to the first translation thereby creating some dependency relations between them. The need for a subsequent translation stems from some perceived shortcomings of the first translation, which the subsequent versions are meant to correct. As noted above, a subsequent translation of a text could be made to update the language of the earlier translation. This does not write off the fact that there could be passive translations, that is, translations “produced without any direct contact with or even knowledge of an existing earlier translation” (Koskinen and Paloposki 2015: 25 – 26). In the next chapter of this study, I showed that when the New Testament versions of the IRE and the ILB were produced, the institutions involved were not aware of the existence of the other translation project. However, both projects were started around the same period and aimed at revising the UIB. So, unless it is clearly established that a subsequent translation project is passive to an existing one, it is safer to see retranslations as done in reaction to the existing translation.

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Academic research on the phenomenon of retranslation by translation scholars has led to the formulation of the Retranslation Hyosthesis (RH), summarized by Desmidt (2009, 671) thus:

First translations […] deviate from the original to a higher degree than subsequent, more recent retranslations, because first translations determine whether or not a text (and its author) is (are) going to be accepted in the target culture; the text is therefore adapted to the norms that govern the target audience. At a later stage, when it has become familiar with the text (and author), the target culture allows for and demands new translations – retranslations – that are no longer definitively target oriented, but source text oriented.

This hypothesis is traced back to Goethe’s ([1819] 1992) thoughts on the three kinds (or rather epochs) of translation in a given culture. According to Goethe (1992: 60), “the first acquaints us with the foreign country on our own terms; a plain prose translation is best for this purpose”, while in the second epoch “the translator endeavours to transport himself into the foreign situation but actually only appropriates the foreign idea and represents it as his own”. In the third epoch,

which is the finest and highest of the three…the goal of the translation is to achieve perfect identity with the original, so that the one does not exist instead of the other but in the other’s place […] the translator identifies so strongly with the original that he more or less gives up the uniqueness of his own nation, creating this third kind of text for which the taste of the masses has to be developed. (Goethe 1992: 61)

Indeed, Goethe (1992: 63) insists that in the third epoch, “[w]e are led, yes, compelled as it were, back to the source text”.

Not much research was done on retranslations per se after Goethe until a special issue of Palimpsests (1990) was dedicated to it. Antoine Berman’s contribution to this issue of the journal has been described by Deane (2011: 8) as encapsulating “one of the most prevalent

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and influential theoretical approaches to retranslation”. Berman (1990) essentially argues, in line with Goethe ([1819]1992), that the first translation is awkward and faulty, and subsequent translations arise from the need to correct these shortcomings of the first translation. The idea is that there is some ideal status a translation needs to attain to be regarded as “great”’, and first translations hardly achieve this because they are just meant to be infelicitous introductions of the source text into the target culture. With time, it requires the retranslations for this ideal to be achieved.

The RH gives the impression that a third translation of a given text tends to be better than the first two translations, the criterion for determining the quality of the translations being their closeness to the source text. In other words, subsequent translations are expected to be closer to the source text than earlier translations. As clarified above, subsequent translations of the Bible in Igbo were made to “correct” the language of the earlier translations or to front a denomination’s ideology. However, does it also follow that subsequent translations of the Bible in Igbo are closer to the source texts than earlier translations? As has been observed by several scholars (cf. Paloposki and Koskinen 2004, 28; Desmidt 2009, 671; Deane 2011, 2), this hypothesis should be tested on empirical data to see how valid it could be and what variables determine the results of such tests. Thus, Chapter 6 tests this hypothesis to see whether it is validated in the IBTs, whether the techniques for language elaboration employed in subsequent translations tilt more towards the source culture or towards the target culture.

Another issue that the RH raises is what the unit for measuring the “closeness” of a target text to the source text should be. Koskinen and Paloposki (2010, 296) have identified

“syntax, lexical choices and culture-specific items, forms of address, units of measurement, spoken language, dialects and slang” as some of the units on which studies on the retranslation hypothesis have been based. In this study, the unit for measuring the closeness of the translations is the lexical and conceptual innovations in the IBTs. That is, the equivalents given in the IBTs for specific Christian concepts are analysed in relation to the English terms in the source texts of these Igbo translation.

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