Toward a Science of Translating: With Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating

PREFACEThis volume, Toward a Science of Translating, has been largelynprompted by the nature of field work in which I have been involvednduring recent years in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. An earlier book,nBible Translating (Nida, 1947a), though very useful to the Bible translator,nis essentially only a practical handbook, with a kind of rule-of-thumbnorientation. Increasingly it became obvious that in order to assistntranslators more satisfactorily it was necessary to provide somethingnwhich would not only be solidly based on contemporary developmentsnin the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and psychology, but would alsonrelate the specific area of Bible translating to the wider activity of translatingnin general. The present volume is an attempt to fill this need.As the title of this book implies, it makes no pretension to be andefinitive volume, for in the present state of development in the field ofnsemantics it is impossible to contemplate writing such a final work.nHowever, there have been a number of important and fruitful developmentsnin linguistics, both in the structural as well as the semantic areas,nand these have contributed very significantly to the organization ofnthis book.Though the scope of translation theory in this volume is all-inclusive,nthe illustrative data are drawn primarily from Biblical materials, andnespecially so in the later chapters. This is not as great a disadvantagenas it might appear at first glance, for no other type of translating hasnsuch a long history, involves so many different languages (at present morenthan 1,200), includes more diverse types of texts, and covers so manyndistinct cultural areas of the world. But though the examples are drawnnprimarily from Biblical data, this volume is not prepared with thenaverage Bible translator in mind, for it is rather too technical in orientation.nNevertheless, it should serve as an important help to such translatorsnas may have some background in present-day linguistic theory andnit will be the basis of other more simply written books now in preparation,nwhich will be aimed at teaching translation methods.n n n