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The Role of Metatexts in the Translations of Sacred Texts: the Case of the Book of Aristeas and the Septuagint

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The Role of Metatexts in the Translations of Sacred Texts: the Case of the Book of Aristeas and the Septuagint THE ROLE OF METATEXTS IN THE TRANSLATIONS OF SACRED TEXTS: THE CASE OF THE BOOK OF ARISTEAS AND THE SEPTUAGINT Jacobus A. Naudé1 University of the Free State 1. Introduction Translations of sacred texts through the centuries were accompanied by metatexts narrating the origin and nature of the specific translation (for example, the Book of Aristeas2 and the Septuagint [LXX]; Dolmetschen and the Luther Bible Translation; the metatexts in the Dutch Authoritative Bible Translation [Statevertaling], etc). However, in the twentieth century Bible translations accompanied by metatexts were very rare. But in the twenty-first century Bible translations have again made use of metatexts (for example, the successful Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling, Das Neue Testament, The Schocken Bible, Die Bybel vir Dowes, etc.). Metatexts will also play a major role in the next Afrikaans Bible translation. The aim of this article is to investigate previous scholarship and to suggest a new avenue for explaining the role of the Book of Aristeas as metatext in the translation of a sacred text, namely the LXX. This exploration will be continued in subsequent articles in the future. The framework for this study is Descriptive Translation Studies, which adopts a descriptive approach towards translation in accounting for the role of metatexts in Bible and religious translations. The descriptive approach originated in the 1970s with Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory and created the impetus for the study of translation to move in the direction of an investigation of the position of translated literature as a whole vis-á-vis the historical and literary systems of the target culture. As a key constituent of many descriptive approaches, such investigative study encourages researchers to ask what translation does in 1 The author wishes to express his thanks to Ms Marlie van Rooyen for her assistance and input in editing this article. 2 Although many sources still refer to the Book of Aristeas as the Letter of Aristeas, the author has chosen to use the term Book of Aristeas, as suggested in the writing of S. Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (London-New York: Routledge, 2003), 1. B.Ar. is used as the abbreviation for this text. 282 JACOBUS A. NAUDÉ specific cultural settings.3 In other words, theorists attempt to account not only for textual strategies in the translated text, but also for the way in which the translation functions in the target cultural and literary system. From the early 1980s onwards there was a tendency in translation studies to move away from the normative approach of translation criticism, which deems a translation as good/faithful, bad or indifferent in terms of what constitutes equivalence between two texts. The focus is rather on a description and explanation of the translation in the light of the translator’s ideology, strategies, cultural norms, etc.4 This study forms part of a National Research Foundation project, Corpus Translation Studies of Bible and Religious Translation, at the University of the Free State. The specific problem to be investigated in this sub-project is as follows: What is the specific relation between the metatext and the translation of a sacred text? This paper aims to shed light on new trends in translation studies and acceptability issues concerning the translation of sacred texts. B.Ar. and the Septuagint will be discussed with regards to the text, content and interpretations in order to work towards a solution, referring to the translation dimensions of sacred texts. 2. New Trends in Translation Studies and Acceptability Issues Maria Tymoczko indicates new trends in translation studies that will unseat current pretheoretical assumptions about translation in the next decade.5 The task of defining translation has not been completed and it will continue to form a central trajectory of translation research in the decades to come. Translation, like the concept ‘game’ discussed by Wittgenstein, is an open concept. In cognitive science such open concepts are sometimes called cluster concepts or cluster categories (transfer, realisation, transcoding, interpretation, etc.). Gideon Toury’s definition of translation as “any target language text which is presented or regarded as such within the target system itself, on whatever grounds” is congruent with this notion of translation as a cluster concept, and it is important in part because it allows for cultural self-definition and self- representation in the field, elements that are central to the 3 See T. Hermans, Translation in Systems: Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Explained (Manchester: St Jerome, 1999). 4 A. Kruger and K. Wallmach, “Research Methodology for the Description of a Source Text and its Translation(s) – a South African Perspective,” South African Journal of African Languages 17 (1997): 119-126. 5 M. Tymoczko, “Trajectories of Research in Translation Studies,” Meta 50 (2005): 1082-1097. .
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