Lost in Translation...again.

When I took over doing international support on my company’s products I was asked to go to England. I came home and told my brother that I was going to London. The first thing he asked me was, “Do they speak English there?”

I couldn’t resist. I replied back, “No. They are sending a translator with me.”

In the end the joke was on me. Although we both spoke English many words and phrases don’t hold the same meaning. The first night I was there we went for kabobs, which to me meant meat on a stick. To my London coworkers they were gyros. Over there you can shag and suck on fags. To me the first meant to dance and the second was quite offensive. To them the first was offensive and the second means nothing more than to smoke a cigarette. When my Australian coworker came to the US and went skiing he was told by the female instructor that if he had problems with a run to go down on his fanny. To an Australian that refers to a body part a man does not have. Imagine the look of shock that was on his face.

The fact of the matter is that languages rarely translate smoothly. Words do not hold the same meaning and the best we can do is to get as close as we can when we translate. One of the problems with a casual read of the bible is that we are reading a translation of a translation using modern understanding of words without a historical context or frame of mind. Before the scriptures were written it was passed on orally. Very few people could read or write and paper was made of papyrus and animal skins that were very expensive. It will come as a surprise to some to learn that ancient Jews did not speak English.

Jesus would have spoken Aramaic, the common language of the Jews, and Hebrew, the religious language. He would have also spoke Greek, which was the common language of business, and if he didn’t speak Latin, the language of the ruling government, he would have at least understood some of it. The oral history and stories would have been told in Aramaic and scripture would have been read in Hebrew. When the early Church told the story of Jesus to the Jews it would have been in Aramaic but when it was passed on to the Gentiles and finally written down it was done so in Greek. Not all words translated easily when written in Greek.

One example is that Jesus referred to God, the Father as “Abba”.  This was translated to Greek as πατερ (pater) which was also pater in Latin, père in French, padre in both Italian and Spanish, vater in German, and eventually father in English. The word father often leads one to think of the adult relationship one has with the man responsible for his parentage. When we think of God the Father this is usually how we think of him.

Yet, Abba had a much deeper meaning than father. If we were to translate the Aramaic straight to English we come closer to the actual meaning of Abba with our word daddy. Daddy is a much more intimate term used between a small child and a father. It signifies a different type of relationship between the two.  A small child needs much greater care and has a more innocent love for his daddy than an adult does for his father. So the prayer Jesus handed down to his Church really begins, “Our Daddy, who art in heaven… “

The English translation of the bible we have comes from a Greek text. There are many examples where the Greek does not translate the full meaning to English. For example, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

Peter answers three times, “You know I love you.” And then Peter gets upset. When read in English it doesn’t make much sense.

We have only one word for love. I can love my wife. I can love my children. I can love my squirrel. I can love my pencil. The word love is used in each of these but we can assume that it is a love of a different type or level for each. The Greek has many words depicting a different type of love. In this passage Jesus is asking Peter if he loves him above all else, with sacrificial love. Peter is answering, “Naw, I love you like a brother.”

This demonstrates the danger of trying to read and gather meaning of the bible on your own. We are reading a translation of a translation of a translation using modern definitions and understanding. It is very easy to miss what is actually being said and receive the wrong message from the text. The devil uses this to direct man into using Holy Scripture to justify every type of evil. We can end up on the wrong road and create our own misguided ad incorrect theology. This is the primary reason we have over 30,000 different flavors of Christianity in the world today.

As a Catholic I am very lucky to come from a faith tradition rooted in an oral history. The Church passed down scripture orally long before it was written. The meaning of a passage was handed down through the ages and I have the Magisterium to teach me that meaning. This does not mean that I don’t read scripture. Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ. This also does not mean that I can’t gain a personal inspiration from scripture. What it does mean is that I cannot redefine for myself what the actual teaching of scripture is based solely on my opinion. I do not get to disagree with the Magisterium on the meaning of scripture.

Read scripture. Learn from it. Refer often to a competent guide that can direct you to the things that have been lost in translation.