JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

estant Bible appeared in 1817. An Irish Catholic Pentateuch,
based on the Vulgate, was published in 1861 together with an
annotated English text. Two Breton Bibles of the 19th century
were Le Gonidec’s Catholic edition of 1866 and G. Le Coat’s
Protestant version of 1889.
The more exotic translations include versions of the
Scriptures in Chinese, Japanese, and American Indian dialects.
There have been pioneering Bible translations in Sanskrit
(1822), Chinese (1823), and Burmese (1834), as well as many
translations into the dialects of India. The first Japanese Protestant
Bible appeared in the late 19th century (1887), a Catholic
version being published only in 1959. A widely distributed
Japanese Protestant edition, the work of Japanese scholars,
was published in 1955, and the first complete Catholic Bible,
in 1964. In North America, John Eliot produced the earliest
Amerindian Bible for the Massachusetts Indians in 1663, and
by 1830 parts of the Bible had been translated and printed
in the Creek and Cherokee languages of the “Five Civilized
Tribes,” using the alphabet devised by the Cherokee chief Sequoyah.
Recent translations along these lines include 2002’s
Tzotil: Chamula Bible, produced for an indigenous people in
Chiapas, Mexico, and a draft of a Bible in Iniktitut, the language
of Canadian Inuits, released the same year. Translation
work is also burgeoning in Africa: Jerusalem’s Home
for Bible Translators and Scholars, in conjunction with the
Hebrew University’s Rothberg International School, has for
some years trained participants in biblical Hebrew, with the
goal that they may translate the Hebrew Bible for Christians
into mostly African languages with a potential readership of
35 million. In the age of the Internet, Bible translations into
non-European languages (e.g., Amharic, Creole, Maori, and
Vietnamese) may also be found online.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, what is avowedly
missionary work continues to produce translations into most
of the world’s languages and dialects, reaching especially into
the Third World. That the Bible remains the gold standard
for demonstrating the translator’s art can be seen, taken to its
logical but absurd conclusion, in the handling of some biblical
texts by fans of the late twentieth century television program
Star Trek. In 1994 a translation of the book of Jonah into
Klingon, the language of a fictional planet of aliens, appeared,
thus beginning one of several renditions of biblical texts into
languages which technically do not exist.
In Cyberspace
Bible translation is well suited for representation on the Internet.
A variety of websites explore theoretical aspects of
translation as they apply to the Bible as well as provide detailed
information about individual translations, even making
some of them available online. Further, there are a number of
sophisticated software programs (searchable on the Internet
under “Bible software programs”) which, in addition to providing
analytical tools for searching terms and forms in both
Hebrew and English, make it possible to toggle between multiple
translations of the same passage. They constitute a valu-
bible
able tool for immediate comparison and for conveying at least
a preliminary sense of translation possibilities.
Websites that discuss issues of Bible translation are most
easily found under the rubrics “Bible translation,” “Bible versions,”
“modern Bible translation,” and “[a particular language]
Bible translation.” A good deal of information may be
found on the websites of the American Bible Society and the
International Bible Society; not surprisingly, these organizations,
along with the others such as the United Bible Society
and the World Bible Translation Center, have as their express
purpose the active promotion of Christianity. Thus, many or
even most sites on Bible translation are doctrinally driven; a
discriminating reader may still, however, glean much useful
information from them.
At the turn of this century, one new media-driven development
is the NET (New English Translation) Bible, a fresh
version which seeks to be simultaneously conservative (i.e.,
evangelical) and scholarly, and is intended for viewing on and
printing off the Web. It contains extensive notes on the text
and its translation which are accessible with a mouse click;
revisions will be electronically incorporated as time goes on.
The avowed purpose of the work is “translating passages consistently
and properly within their grammatical, historical,
and theological context.”
[Everett Fox (2nd ed.)]
Bibliography: JUDEO-PERSIAN: A. Kohut, Kritische Beleuchtung
der persischen Pentateuch uebersetzung des Jacob ben Joseph
Tawus (1871); E. Nestle, in: Realencyklopaedie fuer protestantische theologie
und Kirche, 3 (1897), 124–5. JUDEO-ROMANCE LANGUAGES:
S. Berger, La Bible Française au Moyen-Age (1884); D.S. Blondheim,
Les parlers judéo-romans et la Vetus Latina (1925); M.L. Margolis, The
Story of Bible Translations (1917). YIDDISH: W. Staerk and A.
Leitzmann, Die juedisch-deutschen Bibeluebersetzungen von den Anfaengen
his zum Ausgang des 18 Jahrhunderts (1923). ENGLISH UP TO
WORLD WAR II: W. Allen, Translating for King James (1969); F.F.
Bruce, The English Bible: A History of Translations (1961); C.C. Butterworth,
The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible, 1340–1611
(1941); W. Chamberlin, Catalogue of English Bible Translations (1991);
D. Daiches, The King James Version of the English Bible (1941); S.L.
Greenslade (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from
the Reformation to the Present Day (1963); D. Daniell, The Bible in
English: Its History and Influence (2003), and Tyndale’s Old Testament
(1992); P. Gutjahr, An American Bible (1999); G. Hammond, “English
Translations of the Bible,” in: R. Alter and F. Kermode (eds.), The Literary
Guide to the Bible (1987), The Making of the English Bible (1982),
and “William Tyndale’s Pentateuch: Its Relation to Luther’s German
Bible and the Hebrew Original,” Renaissance Quarterly, 33 (1981); A.S.
Herbert (ed.), Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English
Bible, 1525–1961 (1968); C. Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-
Century Revolution (1993); M. Hills, The English Bible in America: A
Bibliography of Editions of the Bible and New Testament Published in
America 1777–1957 (1962); A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation:
Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (1988); D. Katz, God’s Last Words:
Reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism
(2004); P. Levi, The English Bible from Wycliffe to William Barnes
Barnes (1974); R. Loewe, in: HUCA, 28 (1957), 205–52; J. Long, The
Bible in English: John Wycliffe and William Tyndale (1998); C. MacKenzie,
The Battle for the Bible in England, 1557–1582 (2002); B. Metzger,
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 637