The Translator’s Invisibility

Typical of other theorists in the Anglo-American tradition, however, Nida has argued that dynamic equivalence is consistent with a notion of accuracy. The dynamically equivalent translation does not indiscriminately use “anything which might have special {22} impact and appeal for receptors”; it rather “means thoroughly understanding not only the meaning of the source text but also the manner in which the intended receptors of a text are likely to understand it in the receptor language” (Nida and de Waard 1986:vii–viii, 9). For Nida, accuracy in translation depends on generating an equivalent effect in the target-language culture: “the receptors of a translation should comprehend the translated text to such an extent that they can understand how the original receptors must have understood the original text” (ibid.:36). The dynamically equivalent translation is “interlingual communication” which overcomes the linguistic and cultural differences that impede it (ibid.:11). Yet the understanding of the foreign text and culture which this kind of translation makes possible answers fundamentally to target-language cultural values while veiling this domestication in the transparency evoked by a fluent strategy. Communication here is initiated and controlled by the target-language culture, it is in fact an interested interpretation, and therefore it seems less an exchange of information than an appropriation of a foreign text for domestic purposes. Nida’s theory of translation as communication does not adequately take into account the ethnocentric violence that is inherent in every translation process—but especially in one governed by dynamic equivalence.

Nida’s advocacy of domesticating translation is explicitly grounded on a transcendental concept of humanity as an essence that remains unchanged over time and space. “As linguists and anthropologists have discovered,” Nida states, “that which unites mankind is much greater than that which divides, and hence there is, even in cases of very disparate languages and cultures, a basis for communication” (Nida 1964:2). Nida’s humanism may appear to be democratic in its appeal to “that which unites mankind,” but this is contradicted by the more exclusionary values that inform his theory of translation, specifically Christian evangelism and cultural elitism. From the very beginning of his career, Nida’s work has been motivated by the exigencies of Bible translation: not only have problems in the history of Bible translation served as examples for his theoretical statements, but he has written studies in anthropology and linguistics designed primarily for Bible translators and missionaries. Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence in fact links the translator to the missionary. When in Customs and Cultures: Anthropology for Christian Missions (1954) he asserted that “a close examination of successful missionary {23} work inevitably reveals the correspondingly effective manner in which the missionaries were able to identify themselves with the people—‘to be all things to all men’—and to communicate their message in terms which have meaning for the lives of the people” (Nida 1975:250), he was echoing what he had earlier asserted of the Bible translator in God’s Word in Man’s Language (1952): “The task of the true translator is one of identification. As a Christian servant he must identify with Christ; as a translator he must identify himself with the Word; as a missionary he must identify himself with the people” (Nida 1952:117). Both the missionary and the translator must find the dynamic equivalent in the target language so as to establish the relevance of the Bible in the target culture. But Nida permits only a particular kind of relevance to be established. While he disapproves of “the tendency to promote by means of Bible translating the cause of a particular theological viewpoint, whether deistic, rationalistic, immersionistic, millenarian, or charismatic” (Nida and de Waard 1986:33), it is obvious that he himself has promoted a reception of the text centered in Christian dogma. And although he offers a nuanced account of how “diversities in the backgrounds of receptors” can shape any Bible translation, he insists that “translations prepared primarily for minority groups must generally involve highly restrictive forms of language, but they must not involve substandard grammar or vulgar wording” (ibid.:14). Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence in Bible translation goes hand in hand with an evangelical zeal that seeks to impose on English-language readers a specific dialect of English as well as a distinctly Christian understanding of the Bible. When Nida’s translator identifies with the target-language reader to communicate the foreign text, he simultaneously excludes other target-language cultural constituencies.