UBS text
Critical text of the Greek New Testament. Identical to the Nestle-Aland text, except for some of the critical apparatus. Compare Majority Text.
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Understandable
Understandable refers to something being worded in such a way that hearers can correctly comprehend the intended meaning. Understandability is an important characteristic of good quality translation. Community testing should be done to determine whether or not a translation is understandable to the target audience. See Readability.
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Understatement
Intentionally stating something as less than it actually is, usually for rhetorical effect or politeness. See Understatement. Compare Litotes and Hyperbole.
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Utterance
An utterance is anything which is spoken. It is usually intended to have some meaning. Some people broaden the definition so that an utterance is any meaningful portion of speech, whether spoken or written.
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Vernacular translation
Translation into the everyday (erstwhile vulgar) language of people, as distinguised from a literary dialect of their language or some other dialect or language of education or social prestige. Although they were opposed by church authorities, William Tyndale and John Wycliff believed that the Bible should be translated into the English vernacular, rather than remaining in Latin, the church language of their time. Today Bible translators continue the work of translating the Bible into vernacular languages around the world, whether for Bibleless tribes or for languages in which the Bible is currently in a non-vernacular form, such as an obsolescent church language in a earlier dialect. See Plain English and Common language translation. See also Commentary on The use of everyday language in prayer, in church, and in literature.
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Vulgar
Vulgar refers to a term which is considered culturally crude or "nasty," in the culture of a particular language. Typically, vulgar terms often have to do with bodily excretion and sex acts.
An obsolescing usage of the term vulgar refers to something that is used by the great masses of people. A typical usage of vulgar with this meaning had to do with language spoken by the common people, the majority of a population, such as "Vulgar Latin." The current usage of the word "vulgar" for something crude is, of course, a pejorated sense of the earlier meaning. In this glossary we now use the term vernacular or common to refer to vulgar in the earlier sense of 'common.'
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Vulgate
The translation of the Bible made by St. Jerome into the Latin language at the end of the 4th century A.D. This common (vulgar) dialect of Latin was spoken by the people of the Roman Empire. The Vulgate became the authorized version of the Roman Catholic Church.
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Word
A word is the smallest unit of language which can be pronounced alone and have meaning. Words can be composed of even smaller units of meaning called morphemes, but many morphemes cannot stand alone as words. Translators must be aware of the fact that languages vary considerably in what they treat as words and morphemes. A single word in one language can be equivalent to an entire sentence in another language. For instance, the single Cheyenne word náohkêsáa'oné'seómepêhévetsêhésto'anéhe, translates to the English sentence 'I truly do not regularly pronounce Cheyenne well.'
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Word-for-word translation
A form of literal translation which seeks to match the individual words of the original as closely as possible to
individual words of the target language. The translator seeks to
translate an original word by the same target word as much as
possible (this is technically called concordance). In addition, the order of words of the original language will be followed as
closely as possible. No English translation, except for some
interlinear translations, is a true word-for-word translation,
but those who prefer this form of translation typically promote
formally literal versions such as the NASB. The KJV is a
relatively literal translation, but it is, in general, more
dynamic (less literal) than the NASB. The term form-equivalent translation is a technical label for referring to word-for-word translation. Word-for-word translation contrasts with thought-for-thought translation.
For discussion of the history of the philosophy of translation moving from word-for-word toward more idiomatic approaches, see the following website:
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Word order
In some languages, like English, word order often indicates grammatical relationships. For instance, if we say:
John petted his dog
We know from the rules of English word order that John is the one who did the petting, not his dog. We also know that his dog is the object that got petted. In many other languages words can appear in a variety of orders, with each order indicating the same grammatical relationships. For instance, in the Cheyenne language
hetane evoomoho he'oho
evoomoho hetane he'oho
he'oho evoomoho hetane
each of these three word orders mean
'The man saw the woman.'
(hetane = 'man'; evoomoho = 'saw'; he'oho = 'woman')
The order in which words appear in a translation needs to be according to the grammar and stylistic patterns of that language. Word order should not follow that of the source language if doing so produces an order which is not grammatical or natural in the target language.
Following is unnatural word order in an English Bible version:
ISV Luke 21.14 So purpose in your hearts not to prepare ahead of time your defense.
This sentence is technically grammatical, however, the more natural English word order for Luke 21.14 places the direct object, "your defense," immediately following the verb, resulting in
So purpose in your hearts not to prepare your defense ahead of time.
And that is exactly how a later revision of the ISV reads.
Objective community testing will indicate the second version to be more natural to fluent speakers of English. A simple test question would be to present speakers with both sentences and ask them which sounds better to them. Objective testing would not, of course, construct a yes/no question for such testing, such as, "Can you understand this sentence?" or "Does this sentence sound OK to you?" One wants the testing to determine actual speaker intuitions as carefully as possible, and yes/no questions often are far less instructive in this regard than content questions.
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Written language
Utterances which are written. Language exists first as speech, that is, oral language. Sometimes it is also written. Of course, what is written need not have been orally spoken first. After a people develop a writing system and a written literature is produced, often there develop some differences between oral and written language. Written language is often a little more formal than oral language.
For discussion on differences between between oral and written language, see the following webpages:
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Wrong meaning
When a translation incorrectly communicates the meaning of the original to its users. The existence of wrong meaning is determined through community testing. Literal translation of Biblical idioms often produces wrong meaning. Compare Zero meaning and Inadequate meaning.
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Zero meaning
When a translation communicates no meaning of the original to its users. Zero meaning is determined through community testing. Compare Wrong meaning and Inadequate meaning.
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