Rambam: On the Art of Translation

Originally published in May 2012. Click here for a printer-friendly version of this blog post.

Artwork: Tome Scour, by Steve Belledin

Rambam: On the Art of Translation

One of my neurotic trends in teaching and writing is the need to use my own translations of primary source texts. When I'm lazy I'll type out another translator's translation and then just go through and change the parts I find objectionable. When I have more time, I'll translate the entire thing myself. I will only rely fully on another translator when there is no other option.

Having practiced this habit for a number of years, I have become very familiar with the challenges of translation. I am often faced with difficult decisions about how to translate a certain phrase: how literal I should be, how much liberty I can take, how to preserve the spirit of the author's words, how to balance denotation with connotation, how to handle idioms and subtle references, how to render the text in a manner that is accessible to the layman without sacrificing precision and accuracy, and so on.

Thankfully, I was guided early on by an important translation tip from none other than the Rambam himself to Shmuel ibn Tibbon, who translated the Rambam's Moreh ha'Nevuchim (Guide for the Perplexed) from Arabic into Hebrew, among other works. On September 30th, 1199, Rambam wrote a letter to Shmuel ibn Tibbon advising him on matters of translation and philosophy. In the middle of the letter he gives the following piece of advice, with the main point underlined by me:

I will mention to you one general principle. Whoever wishes to translate a text from one language to another, intending to translate word for word but, at the same time, to preserve the order of the words and sentences of the original - he will face tremendous difficulty, and his translation will be exceedingly ambiguous and faulty ... 

It is not proper to do this. Rather, one who translates a text from one language to another must first understand the idea, and only afterwards should he formulate what he understood into the other language. It is impossible to do this without changing the order of the words, using many words in the place of one word, using one word in place of many words, subtracting words, or adding words until the idea is formulated and rendered intelligible in the language into which he translates. 

[In case you were wondering, that was my translation of Shmuel ibn Tibbon's translation of the Rambam's Arabic. I found another English translation of most of the letter on a weird site, but I don't know who the translator is, and preferred to use my own translation anyway. This translation was difficult because it felt like the Rambam was looking over my shoulder whenever I deviated from his advice.]

I decided to write this post this week because I recently came across a Wikipedia article which expresses the Rambam's distinction. According to the article, a linguist named Eugene Nida coined a set of terms for this distinction: dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence: 

Dynamic equivalence (also known as functional equivalence) attempts to convey the thought expressed in a source text (if necessary, at the expense of literalness, original word order, the source text's grammatical voice, etc.), while formal equivalence attempts to render the text word-for-word (if necessary, at the expense of natural expression in the target language). The two approaches represent emphasis, respectively, on readability and on literal fidelity to the source text. There is no sharp boundary between dynamic and formal equivalence. Broadly, the two represent a spectrum of translation approaches. 

The terms "dynamic equivalence" and "formal equivalence" are associated with the translator Eugene Nida, and were originally coined to describe ways of translating the Bible, but the two approaches are applicable to any translation.

Someone should edit the Wikipedia article and give Rambam his due credit.