The Bible at Cultural Crossroads

From Translation to Communication

Harriet Hill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317640509
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Bible translators have focused their efforts on preparing a text that is clear, natural and accurate, with the expectation that audiences will understand the message if it is in their language. Field research among the Adioukrou of Côte d'Ivoire shows that audiences also need to have access to the contextual information the author expected his audience to bring to the text. When such information is provided, both understanding of and interest in the message increase dramatically. These findings support Relevance Theory's claim that meaning is inferred from the interaction of text and context. To the extent that the contextual knowledge evoked by the text for contemporary audiences differs from that evoked for the first audience, understanding is impaired. The Bible at Cultural Crossroads presents a model to assist translators in identifying contextual mismatches and applies it on the thematic level to mismatches between first-century Jewish and Adioukrou views of the unseen world, and on the passage level to contextual mismatches arising from four Gospel passages. In-text and out-of-text solutions for adjusting contextual mismatches are explored, with field research results showing the effectiveness of various solutions. Context is shown to be both a significant factor in communication and a dynamic one. Translations of the text alone are not sufficient for successful communication.

1. Relevant Communication

In 1944, Len Harris translated one book of the Bible for the Nunggubuyu of north Australia – the Gospel of Mark. When it was completed, he read it to the people around the campfire in the evenings. He told them he was only going to be there a few more months, and so he asked them what they would like him to do. They said, “Translate Genesis, because we’re very interested in the beginning of things” . He translated the first three chapters, and read them to the people around the campfire at night. He went to bed, but they stayed up all night around the fire talking about the Genesis story. They explained, “We told you we were interested in the beginnings of things” (Harris 1997:186).

Another translator, Alvina Federwitz, tells of her work among the Kuwaa of Liberia. She and her husband had worked many years to translate the New Testament into Kuwaa, but it was an uphill battle to get people interested in reading it or listening to it. Then she began story-telling workshops, in which people told and wrote down their own stories and then listened to Bible stories. The people responded with a ground swell of interest so great that her new problem was how to get enough books printed and tapes copied (Federwitz 2003).

Both of these communicators began their work with a product in mind, which they then presented to their audiences. These efforts resulted in minimal communicative success. Then they started with the audience and designed products that corresponded to their interests, and the response was like a flood. These stories could be contrasted with other stories of Bible translations that have been carefully done with the best of linguistic analysis, splendid orthographies, and with all of the jots and tittles of the text exegetically correct, but which sit on shelves because no one is interested in them. When communicators start with a product, and then try to get the audience interested in that product, they do not often succeed. Successful communication starts with the audience and responds to their interests.

Successful communication can be seen as a two-step process. Getting the audience’s attention is the first step, keeping their attention with relevant products the second. If communicators don’t get their audience’s attention, their efforts to design relevant products will go unnoticed. In this chapter, I address the macro-level of getting the audience’s attention, extending Relevance Theory principles to include practical as well as cognitive factors. After this chapter, the rest of the book zeros in on relevance on the micro-level of understanding meaning.

Getting the Audience’s Attention

We communicate intentionally with people because we have something we want to get across to them.¹ This intention to make an audience aware (or more aware) of some information is referred to as the communicator’s informative intent (Sperber and Wilson 1995:58). But an informative intent is not sufficient for successful communication. Communicators must also get their audience to recognize that they want the audience to know this information. This is referred to as their communicative intent: “to make it mutually manifest to audience and communicator that the communicator has this informative intention” (ibid.:61). Communicators have to get their audience’s attention if their communication is to succeed. If they do not get the audience’s attention, they simply have a frustrated, unfulfilled informative intent.

To fulfill an informative intention by making it known is, properly speaking, to communicate. Communication is not an accident that happens when people have informative intentions and these informative intentions somehow become known to their intended audience. Communication is generally intentional.

(Sperber 1994:195)

The first task of a communicator is to get their audience’s attention. A flawless Bible translation is no better than a poor one if the intended audience never reads or hears it.

The environment is overflowing with stimuli that attract people’s attention. They have to choose what they will give their attention to. For example, wherever you are reading this book, there are many things in the environment and in your mind that you could give your attention to: the temperature, the ticking of the clock, the colour of the walls, your fingernails, that you need to buy milk, and so forth. You have chosen to give your attention to this book, because you think it is more relevant than these other stimuli. Relevance is comparative, with things being more or less relevant. People give their attention to the stimuli that seem the most likely to be relevant. The first principle of relevance is that “human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance” (Sperber and Wilson 1995:260). As Sperber explains:

At any given time, humans perceive more phenomena than they are able to pay attention to, and they have more information stored in memory than they can exploit. Cognitive efficiency involves making the right choices in selecting which available information to attend to and which available past information to process it with.

(1996:114)

To attract the audience’s attention, communicators have to make their stimulus the most compelling one available. Simply attracting the audience’s attention, however, is not enough. Communicators must do so in such a way that the audience realizes what it is they are trying to communicate. For example, I could attract your attention to this book, but you might give your attention to the font used, the formatting, or the paper quality, rather than giving your attention to the message of the book. If I do not get your attention in a way that you realize that it is the message of this book that I’m trying to communicate, you will not discover the meaning I am attempting to get across. Alternatively, if I am trying to teach formatting skills, and you give your attention to the message of the book, I will have failed. People may be attracted to translated Scripture, but not for the reasons the translator intended. For example, rather than giving attention to the message of Scripture, they may be interested in the status it brings to their language. If this is the case, the communication has failed even though it attracted the audience’s attention. Communicators must not only have information and get the audience’s attention, they must do so in such a way that the audience understands the meaning the communicator intends to convey.

In the same way that a language must be learned in dialogue with people, a communicative translation program must be developed in dialogue with the audience. When my husband and I lived with the Adioukrou of Côte d’Ivoire for many years. I began learning their language using the LAMP method (Brewster and Brewster 1976). This method involves eliciting sentences by starting with a basic sentence and substituting a variety of subjects, objects, and modifiers. I generated hundreds of sentences and expressions that I could say in Adioukrou. When I tried to talk to people using my newly acquired Adioukrou, however, they cringed. Then I recorded one of their texts and transcribed it. The grammatical structures and information flow were very different than that of my elicited sentences. Soon I realized that although one could say all of the LAMP elicited sentences in Adioukrou, no one ever would say them. I had generated them using categories from my cultural grid. In the same way, it is important to know what kinds of translation products will attract the audience’s attention, not just what could be translated. This can only be discovered through dialogue with the audience.

Given the plethora of stimuli, how do people choose which stimuli will be relevant? One reason we engage in communication is to improve our mental representation of the world – our cognitive environment. This includes everything we know or are able to know about the world – everything that is manifest to us: from our senses, from memory, from culture, or from communication.² It includes both the things that we know and hold as true as well as things we are capable of holding as true. For example, it is apparent to me that there are no kangaroos on Mars, although I have never entertained that thought before and am not consciously aware of it. All of these concepts, those I’m conscious of and those I’m not conscious of, make up my cognitive environment.

The better our mental representation of reality, the better we can manage life. One strong motivation for communication is the desire to improve cognitive environments. The fact that speakers request the audience’s attention communicates the belief that they think they have something the audience should know. This is described by the second (or communicative) principle of relevance: “Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance” (Sperber and Wilson 1995:260). Communicators also benefit from the process. As they speak to others, they also speak to themselves. By formulating their message explicitly, their own thought processes are stimulated and their cognitive environment benefits.

The addressee gives attention to the communicator in faith that he will benefit from the message. For example, if I’m going downtown all day by public transportation, I listen to the weather report to know whether or not I need to take an umbrella. This information is highly relevant to me. If I were staying at home all day, the information would be less relevant to me. I give my attention to the stimuli that I think will bring me some benefit. These improvements in the cognitive environment are what people are looking for when they communicate. They are referred to as cognitive effects. The more cognitive effects a communication has, the more relevant it is. This is described by the first condition to the second principle of relevance: “An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the positive cognitive effects achieved when it is optimally processed are large” (ibid.:265).

Improvements to the cognitive environment can be facts about the world, but they can also be information about our feelings or relationships. Sometimes we communicate simply to develop shared knowledge with our communication partner. We may engage in small talk or light-hearted banter with very little informational content (referred to as phatic communication). The cognitive effects may be mainly about the state of the relationship or how we feel rather than the content of the communication. These cognitive effects, too, must pass through our cognition to experience them.³

Cognitive Effects

There are three basic kinds of cognitive effects: contradicting assumptions, modifying the strength of assumptions, and deriving new implications from existing assumptions.⁴ All three involve linking the communication to the hearer’s existing cognitive environment and changing that cognitive environment in some way.

An utterance or text can contradict assumptions the hearer has and replace them with other assumptions. For example, if I think that we have a meeting scheduled at 3:00, and you tell me, “No, it’s at 2:00”, you have contradicted an assumption I held, and this will weaken my assumption or eliminate it and replace it with the correct one. This would be relevant information to me, as my mental representation of reality would be improved, helping me to arrive at the meeting on time.

As in any communication, in Scripture relevance is often achieved by contradicting people’s existing beliefs. When Jesus called a tax collector to follow him, alarms went off in the minds of pious Jews. They did not associate with tax collectors and did not think any circumspect Jew should. Jesus’ act challenged their behaviour. To the extent that present-day readers don’t know what first-century Jews believed, the relevance of Jesus’ communication is diminished. They may have faith that Scripture is relevant in principle, but they can’t experience its relevance because they don’t know the assumptions it contradicted.

A second type of cognitive effect is to strength of the hearer’s existing assumptions. In this case, the hearer already has the general idea, but he holds it too weakly and consequently his inferences are weaker than intended. For example, if I overheard some friends talking about a meeting at 2:00 today, and you say, “There’s a meeting today. I got an email about it”, your utterance would strengthen my assumption about the meeting.⁵

In the Gospels, Jesus often strengthened his audience’s assumptions. For example, Jews in the intertestamental period believed that it was honourable to defend one’s faith, even in the face of death. When Jesus said, “Rejoice, and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven”, he strengthened their belief that suffering for one’s faith was a good thing; it was not only honourable, it was something to be happy about.

The third kind of cognitive effect is when an utterance leads to new assumptions that are derived from the interaction of the hearer’s existing assumptions and the utterance itself. Notice this is not simply adding new information. The utterance must be linked to the audience’s existing assumptions so that they are able to access a context in which to process the utterance. For example, if I tell you, “Mapipo’s son died”, you can only infer that somewhere in the world there is a person called Mapipo who had a son who died. This information doesn’t intersect with your world, and so it gives such weak cognitive effects, you probably do not find it relevant. If, on the other hand, I tell you that your best friend’s son died, the information is linked to your world, and you will derive new assumptions. Successful communication always bridges new information to the audience’s existing cognitive environment, thus making cognitive effects possible.

In the Gospels, Jesus added to his audience’s store of knowledge by using well known concepts and building his message from them. For example, John 15 uses the metaphor of the vine and the branches, which were a part of everyday life, to explain new truths about godly living. He explained something as unknown as the Kingdom of God through a series of stories about every-day events.

Processing Costs

Relevant communication results in cognitive effects, but these come at a price. It takes effort to process communication, and effort is a negative factor which reduces relevance. Relevance is determined by the relationship between the cognitive effects gained and the effort expended. This is assessed in an intuitive, comparative way rather than absolutely or mathematically (Sperber and Wilson 1995:132). The effort-effect dynamic is described in the second condition of the second principle of relevance: “An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the effort required to achieve these positive cognitive affects is small” (ibid.:265). People give their attention to stimuli that they think will be the most relevant ones available to them, and then unconsciously monitor the effort-effect relationship as the communication proceeds. If, over a period of time, they find the effort exceeds the benefits, and they are unable to repair the communication situation, they gradually stop paying attention to it in favour of more relevant stimuli.

Anything that increases processing costs without a corresponding increase in effects reduces relevance. Factors that increase c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Relevant Communication
• Chapter 2 Context and Comprehension
• Chapter 3 Context Building
• Chapter 4 The Design and Effects of Relevant Products
• Chapter 5 Ways of Supplying Context: Out-of-Text and In-Text Solutions
• Chapter 6 Cultural Research
• Chapter 7 First-Century Jewish Perceptions of the Unseen World
• Chapter 8 The Effect of the Key Term Choices on Adioukrou Theology
• Chapter 9 Identifying and Adjusting Contextual Mismatches in John 13:1-30
• Chapter 10 The Communication Context: Working with the Church Community
• Chapter 11 Conclusions and Implications
• Appendix A Identifying and Adjusting Contextual Mismatches in Matthew 4:1-10
• Appendix B Identifying and Adjusting Contextual Mismatches in Mark 5:1-20
• Appendix C Identifying and Adjusting Contextual Mismatches in Luke 11:14-26
• Appendix D Catherine Vos’ Bible Story: In the Upper Room
• Appendix E Example Work Chart: John 13:1-30
• References
• Index