Denotation
See the following website:
Compare Connotation.
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Descriptive grammar
Descriptive grammar is the study and description of how people actually speak. As such, it contrasts with prescriptive grammar which attempts to say how people should speak. Modern linguistics is concerned with descriptive, rather than prescriptive, grammar.
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Dictionary
A dictionary is a book which lists words of a language along with their meanings. Dictionaries can have a variety of formats and purposes. See Lexicon.
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Donor language
Same as source language.
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Discourse
Discourse refers to the entirety of an utterance. When recorded it is called a text. A discourse may be one of several overall types of genre and it can be composed of more than one embedded genres. Sensitivity to discourse factors is crucial for a translator, since any word or sentence takes part of its meaning from its discourse context.
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Discourse analysis
The study of discourse, its genres, structures, importance of discourse to understanding the meanings of its parts, including words in discourse context.
See the following books and webpages on discourse analysis, see:
Click here for the Discourse analysis section on the Bible Translation website.
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Disjointed
Disjointed refers to any utterance or writing in which its words and phrases do not connect smoothly with each other. There is a lack of literary flow. The speaking or writing sounds choppy. Typically, disjointedness occurs because there has been insufficient attention paid to including cohesion devices of the language. A translation will often sound disjointed if it is translated literally from the source language. In such a process the translator often assumes that meaning is essentially found in individual words, and does not understand that crucial meaning is also found above the word level, connecting words to each other and sections of discourse to each other. A translator must fully understand what the devices are in his own language for connecting words, phrases, and larger portions of discourse, and use those devices to translate the devices which have the same function in the source language.
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Doublet
A doublet is the use in some languages of two (or more) terms conjoined to
create an expression which typically intensifies the meaning of
either term used alone. The two parts of a doublet are either
synonymous or have a generic-specific relationship. In literature on Biblical rhetorical structures, doublets are usually referred to as rhetorical parallelism or synonymous parallelism. See the book Doublets
In the New Testament, by Bruce R. Moore, for excellent
discussion and a thorough listings of Biblical doublets.
NASB Eph. 2.19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,
but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's
household.
"strangers" and "aliens" are synonyms,
referring to a single status of "outsiderness" which
the Ephesians Christians previously had, before they became
Christians.
NRSV Psalm 118:24 This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
We consider "rejoice" and "be glad" to be synonyms and their conjoined structure to be a doublet. For languages, such as English, which do not seem to have doublets as part of their grammatical inventory, this verse would accurately and naturally be translated as:
"This is the day that the LORD has made; let us be very glad about it."
Doublets are similar to hendiadys.
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Dynamic
If a translation is dynamic we mean that the original meaning is communicated naturally in it, as well as accurately. Dynamic translation contrasts with literal translation, which often loses some of the original meaning in its attempt to retain the form of the original as much as possible. A dynamic translation pays careful attention to the natural features of the target language. It uses a vernacular (commonly used) vocabulary as opposed to a specialist vocabulary of the target language. A dynamic translation attempts to speak in the language of the average fluent speaker of the language. The terms dynamic translation and idiomatic translation are equivalent.
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Dynamic equivalence (DE)
Dynamic
equivalence is a translation principle which was described by
the Bible translation statesman Eugene
Nida. With this principle a translator seeks to translate the
meaning of the original in such a way that the target language
wording will trigger the same impact in its hearers that the
original wording had upon its hearers. As some have mistakenly
concluded, Nida never pitted "meaning" against
"impact" (or reader "response", as he called
it). Nida, as do all informed translators, understood that
meaning is a totality ("bundle") which includes
meanings of parts of words (morphemes), words themselves, how
words connect to each other (syntax, grammar), words in
communication contexts (pragmatics), connotation, etc. We always
want a hearer to understand the same meaning as did
hearers of the source text. That, essentially, is what Nida was
saying.
But dynamic equivalence, as a concept, puts an overly narrow
focus upon the response of hearers, perhaps sometimes at the
expense of other factors which are also crucial to adequate Bible
translation, such as accuracy of the message, the uniqueness of
the original historical setting, etc. The term dynamic
equivalence has often been mischaracterized. Because of this, and
also because most translators recognize that translation adequacy
calls for attention to a multiplicity of factors, most
translators today do not use the term. Instead, as they
characterize how it is often necessary to use different FORMS of
the target language to encode the same MEANING as the original,
they prefer to use terms which are easier to understand such as
idiomatic translation, meaning-based translation, closest natural equivalent, and functional equivalence. A lay term used by some
people is thought-for-thought translation. None of
these terms is exactly the same as dynamic equivalence, although, like
dynamic equivalence, all focus upon preservation of meaning,
rather than form, when there is tension between the
two.
The KJV translators understood that one cannot always
translate the forms of a language literally and still retain the
original meaning. There are several passages in the KJV which
exemplify dynamic equivalence. For instance,
KJV Rom. 6.2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin,
live any longer therein?
The KJV exclamation "God forbid" of Romans 6.2, and
numerous other verses in the KJV, is dynamic equivalence
translation. It is not a literal translation of the original
Greek, me: genoito "not may it be" ("may it not
be" in more natural English word order). Instead, it is a
strong English exclamation using God's name, a translation which
the KJV translators felt was more natural in English and which
has an impact which is, presumably, closer to what the impact of
the original had upon its hearers than the literal "May it
not be" would have on English hearers. With this dynamic
equivalence rendering, the KJV translators place a higher
priority upon how the original meaning will come across to
the English hearers (that is, "reader response")
than they do holding to the literal form of the original.
They were translating total meaning of the Greek phrase here
instead of simply (literal) meaning at the word level of
language.
Compare Functional Equivalence.
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Eclectic text
Same as critical text. Greek text of the New Testament which gives priority to the oldest known copies of the original text. Compare Majority Text. See Textual criticism.
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Ellipsis
Ellipsis is the deliberate omission of some aspect of language form whose meaning can be understood from the context of that form. Ellipsis is sometimes called gapping by linguists. Languages vary in whether and how much they allow ellipsis. So translators must sometimes supply in a translation what is ellipted in the original, so that the meaning of the original will be preserved in the translation.
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Epistle
An epistle is a letter, a literary composition which serves as correspondence between individuals or groups. The epistles of the Bible are largely written in hortatory genre. Additionally, some scholars conclude that the epistles were written in a unique genre of Greek called epistolary.
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Epistolary
Epistolary is a distinctive discourse genre claimed by some to characterize Greek letters, of which the epistles of the New Testament would be examples.
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Equivalent
Equivalent refers to having the same meaning and function. Theoretically, absolute equivalence between forms in the same language or between different languages may never be possible, but equivalence for all practical purposes is often possible and is a foundational concept for translation theory. Equivalence of translated forms to those of the source language is analogous to synonymy within a single language.
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Essentially literal translation
The translators of the ESV promote it as:
an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original.
It appears that an essentially literal translation may have some more natural wordings than a literal translation, and so is easier to read. The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) is probably another essentially literal translation.
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Euphemism
Euphemism
substitutes an acceptable, inoffensive expression for one that is
socially unacceptable, offensive, or which may suggest something
unpleasant (Beekman
and Callow, Translating the Word of God, page 119):
KJV I Cor. 11.30 For this cause many [are] weak and sickly
among you, and many sleep.
Original Greek "sleep" was used by Paul here as a
euphemism for being dead. In many cultures, it is inappropriate
to speak about death directly. English speakers use a number of
euphemisms for death, in the attempt not to speak too directly
about this unpleasant topic. Examples are: "expired",
"deceased," "gone to his reward," "gone
home", and "passed away."
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Exact equivalence
As far as we know, the term exact equivalence has not been used in the context of Bible translation. The nearest term may be complete equivalence. Exact equivalence refers to when a term in the target language is identical in meaning and scope to a term in the source language (this usage of the technical term scope may be close to another term, semantic range, which refers to all possible meaning senses for a word) . The two terms of the source and target languages which are exact equivalents are exact semantic matches.
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Exclusive language
Language forms which are perceived to exclude some members of a society. For instance, for many English speakers today, the word "man," when used generically to refer to "humanity," is perceived to exclude females (within its referential meaning).
The opposite of exclusive language is inclusive language.
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Exegesis
Exegesis is the analysis of a Biblical text to determine its meaning. Before one can translate a Biblical text, he must exegete it to know its meaning. See Hermeneutics.
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Exegete
An exegete is someone who studies to determine the meaning of a Biblical text. At least one person on a Bible translation team needs to be an exegete, so that the meaning of the original text is determined, before that text can be translated to the target language.
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Exegetical accuracy
Exegetical accuracy refers to how closely a translated text preserves the meaning of the original text. See also Accuracy and Faithfulness. In this glossary we distinguish between exegetical accuracy and communicative accuracy.
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Explicit information
Explicit information is overtly stated. It contrasts with implicit information.
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Expository
Expository discourse explains or describes something.
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Extended metaphor
An extended metaphor is a metaphor which is extensively developed. Typically, there is a relatively large amount of discourse devoted to this figure and there is theological focus placed upon it. Some extended metaphors used in the Bible are:
body, referring to a local group of believers and/or all Christians
bread of life, referring to Jesus
vine, referring to Jesus, who gives life to believers, figuratively, the branches.
Simple metaphors often cannot be translated literally to another language, because they will not be understood with their original intended figurative meaning. But the translator must usually find some way to retain extended metaphors because so much of Scripture refers to them in their figurative sense. One solution is to translate an extended metaphor as a simile in the target language, if this can be done. For instance, one might translate, "A group of believers is like a body...."
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Extraneous information
Extraneous information is material which is included in a translation which is not found explicitly in the source text, nor can it legitimately be considered to be implicit in the source text to the degree that it is necessary for communicating the central message of the source text. Inclusion of extraneous information can be one cause for criticism that a particular translation is interpretive. If extraneous information is true and relevant to helping one better understand the background or meaning of a passage, it belongs in a commentary, not in the translation itself. Compare Implicit information and Explicit information.
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