Pragmatic Linguistics Applied to Translation
Projects and Inter-cultural Relationships for Frontier Missionaries
(not only for Bible translators): an African focus
Jim Harries. February 2007
Submitted to International Journal of Frontier Missions
Glossary
Pragmatics is: the "study of the relations between language and context that are basic to an account of language understanding" (Levinson 1983:21).
Introduction
Translation issues have all too often been considered the rightful domain of SIL and Wycliffe ; the Bible translators. This article challenges this restrictive wisdom. The linguistic guidelines proposed in this article are important for frontier missionaries engaged in church planting, theological education and all kinds of support and development projects. While few missionaries doubt the value of having Scriptures in people"s own languages, more need to consider the importance of not only having those Scriptures, but also using them, and building on the foundation that they represent. Missionaries need, I argue in this essay, to pay urgent attention to linguistic and translation issues that bear heavily on their mission and ministry.
Mission methodologies used by frontier missionaries can be so misguided as not to be effective even in "Christianised" parts of the world. This article attempts to aid them to know how to avoid some of the difficult problems of frontier contexts.
1. Dated Dynamic Equivalence Methodology
I begin by considering the "dynamic equivalence" methodology of Biblical interpretation. This is taken as a standard method in popular books such as Fee and Stuart (1993:36). It is unfortunately, I suggest, seriously misleading especially in inter-cultural context. I base this critique on an argument that I now expand upon, to the effect that the meanings of words arise from and depend upon their contexts. I demonstrate below that a word without a context has no meaning. Words do not have "meaning" but rather impacts, and then as a result of their impacts on contexts (of all sorts including cognitive, social, personal, textual etc.), meaning arises.
Let"s imagine that on walking into your sitting room one morning, you find a piece of paper on the floor with a word written on it. This could be any word. It could be chocolate or Christian or holiness or an unpleasant word such as dead or a neutral word such as house. What could these words mean to you as you pick up the piece of paper and begin to read? Nothing. Nothing, that is, unless or until you add a context to the words. Has someone left you some chocolate, or perhaps your husband has become a Christian, maybe your daughter is telling you that you need more holiness, or your son has found that the dog is dead, or your mother"s house has been sold. Neither the leaving of the chocolate or the becoming of the husband or telling of your daughter, finding of your son, dying of the dog or selling of your mother"s house are in the word. They are all contexts outside and beyond the word on the paper that you are utilising in order to apply some meaning to the word on the paper! Without them the individual words mean nothing at all. (You may want to comment on the handwriting, the colour of ink used, or the kind of paper on which the word is written. Note that these things are also all part of the context to the actual word.)
Let"s consider sentences instead of words. Let"s take; "the cat is on the mat". Now, unlike the individual words, this sentence seems to mean something. But, can it have a meaning without a context? What is a cat? Do you learn about cats by studying the word cat, or by looking at a context of cats; by hearing cats, hearing people talk of cats, stroking cats and so on? The meaning to us of the word cat arises from our context of cats around us, and not from the word itself. So what of "on the mat"? What is a mat, and what is to be on it? Perhaps someone once told you that "the pen is on the table", and you saw a pen on the table, hence you now assume that the cat being on the mat in some way resembles the pen being on the table. The word "mat" doesn"t tell you anything about a "mat", but it is the context in which you have heard the word used in the past that does this. So we can say that, as words, sentences are "full of contexts", as also are paragraphs, and even whole books. (Some argue, I believe correctly, that the Bible is correctly understood only when every part is read in the context of the whole. Even doing this however does not diminish the role of the extra-biblical context, that must lay the groundwork for understanding all the words concerned. That is, individual parts of the Bible, such as lions, people, houses, crying and so on, must first be understood from outside of the Bible in order to make sense as part of the Bible.)
People differ more or less in their contexts and in their upbringings. That means that they differ in what they apply to a word so as to derive its meaning, which in turn means that different people will deduce different meanings from the same words. What happens in the course of translation by a process of dynamic equivalence is that a translator will derive meaning from a word / sentence / text as understood in his/her particular context, and then try to translate that meaning into the target language. Dynamic equivalence methodologies attempt to translate meanings and not words, yet we have found that the meanings that arise are peculiar to a context. How then can the translator know that the context that s/he happens to use to translate is the "correct" one, or even a correct one, or the one that the reader of the translation he/she is making ought to get? Clearly the decision is arbitrary, according to context. (The decision may be following the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But then that is not "translation" in the modern sense but "inspiration". The possibility of inspiration presumably does not do away with the need for careful translation.) What translators using dynamic equivalence methodology end up doing then is not translating words, but their contexts!
This is beginning to look serious. What happens when the Bible is translated into English by an English person, is that we get an English-context translation of the Bible. Perhaps such a Bible is appropriate for use in an English (cultural) context, but I suggest that it may not be accurate for a non-English context. Bible translations, I suggest are on principle primarily accurate in the context for which they have been produced. The more helpful English translation of a Bible into English for someone from a non-English context may well be a "literal" translation, that converts the original language as closely as possible word for word, so as to preserve more of the original for it to interact with as (presumably God) intended with the non-English context. It is best of all for people from a non native English context not to have the Bible either in English or translated from an English translation (i.e. a translation of an English context), but to have the Bible translated into the language of the target community from the original language text.
My aim has been to point out the serious weakness of the dynamic equivalence interpretation methodology in cross-cultural context. I suggest that a Bible that is translated according to the principles of dynamic equivalence (such as the NIV) and in fact also free translations such as the Good News or Living Bibles (because they use the same principle but following a less systematic process) are strictly only appropriate in the culture for which they have been prepared. This principle is rarely considered in the inter-cultural context. Bibles in other (especially African) languages are increasingly being translated not from Biblical languages or more literal translations like the KJV, but from dynamic equivalence translations such as the NIV. The most recent Luo language (the language of the people who I work with in Kenya) Bible is certainly a case in point: "This IBS translation of the New Testament is for Dholuo (alternate name for the Luo language), which is primarily used in Kenya. This translation uses a informal language style and applies a meaning-based translation philosophy. It is translated from the English NIV [sic] was completed in October 2000" (International Bible Society 2000.) This results in the very confusing situation in which even translations of Bibles in non-Western cultures are not only God"s word, but explanations of Western people"s culture and Western people"s ignorance of non-Western people"s culture. (These explanations of Western people"s culture are not of course a means to enable someone to understand the culture. They are not a road map that takes someone to a place, but comments on scenery in passing, and that scenery being foreign to the listeners (much as talking of snow to people who live in the tropics) I suggest are not of value to non-Western hearers or readers.)
The same of course applies even more to Bible expositions and teachings from the West ; that are invariably based on a particular context, and therefore are not transferable across contexts. Hence preachers and Bible teachers who move from one culture to another but teach according to the culture of their origin are teaching not the Bible, but their culture.
I will try to illustrate this using examples. Someone used to seeing cows in a field, on seeing cows in a field will not normally comment on this because it is normal. But someone used to seeing sheep in a field on seeing cows in a field may well exclaim that "there are cows in the field"! The person used to seeing cows on hearing such a comment will not learn that there are cows (that he already knows) but will realise that the fields the speaker normally sees do not have cows. The listener is not learning about his/her own context, but about that of the speaker. Similarly someone writing that "pastor"s shouldn"t inherit their dead brothers" wives" will help readers to know that wife inheritance is an issue amongst them. Telling someone that it is "wrong to say you will be at a meeting at 8.00am but not turn up till 10.00am" tells the listener that late-coming is an issue for those people. Saying "Jesus loves even the Bemba people" tells listeners that there is some problem in relationship with the Bemba people. Saying that "Christians shouldn"t participate in valentines day" could be informing someone that there is a thing called "valentines day", and so on!
When someone from one context teaches someone from another context from or about the Bible, the listener will learn about the culture of the speaker. A number of my African colleagues have told me that they are able to distinguish the foreign cultural elements from true Biblical teaching when Westerners without experience in Africa teach. My own observation at many points however is that they fail to do this. Hence English can become a "holy" language, prosperity gospel spreads, and misunderstandings that may individually be small, accumulate. This is why missionaries should not teach the Bible until they have learned the context of the people they are reaching. Part of the learning of that context, is the learning of the language. The same applies to books ; the impact of Christian books written in one cultural context may be totally different in another to that intended by the original author. Theologies, to be in tune with local culture, should (must) grow locally. As Sanneh puts it: " one can demand or even require a vernacular direction for the faith in the interests of orthodoxy" (Sanneh 1989:174).
Someone may ask, if acquiring meaning from words is all about context, and when we read the Bible we read it entirely through our own context, then what is God"s role? The answer of course is ; in the context! God is not paper and ink. He is a God who is living, dynamic, moving and working. God is an essential part of the context who must be there in order for us to correctly understand his word. And I do not think that this is saying anything new.
2. Alternative Translation Methodologies
I will draw heavily on Mojola and Wendland (2003), who point us to a variety of different "modern" approaches to translation, for the content of this Chapter. I consider them in reference to interpretation of the Bible, but also of theology, culture, and in fact the whole of life. The existence of these alternatives should accentuate our observation that dynamic equivalence is only one of many options in translation.
Mojola and Wendland refer us to Nord (1997) and functionalist approaches to translation. Nord points out that a reader "chooses the items they regard as interesting, useful or adequate to the desired purposes" (25). She talks of the skopos rule that Mojola and Wendland give as being "translate/interpret/speak/write in a way that enables your text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function" (Mojola and Wendland 2003:13-14). So then one way of translating the Scriptures, is according to the perceived function of the Scriptures. But this happens when Scriptures are translated for use in the West, according to a perceived function in the West, this is problematic when the same Scriptures are then to be used in another context where their function ought to be different. To take a simplistic example ; Scriptural interpretation that emphasises the need for faith to a disbelieving secular society can have the unfortunate effect of aggravating magical beliefs in a holistic society rooted in a "magical worldview". (A North American preacher telling his audience that he "depends totally on God" will be understood by his fellow countrymen as meaning "in addition to my pension, paid off mortgage, two cars in the garage" etc. but can easily be understood by African people as implying that they need not plant any crops that year!) Again, as I have emphasised above, this applies to Scriptural interpretation in the broad sense ; including preaching, systematic theologies, devotional books and so on.
Another approach to translation tries to ensure that a description of an original text applies to the description of the translated text. If an original piece of text is described as "a beautiful piece of poetry", the first requirement for its translation is that it be a "beautiful piece of poetry". If the original is "advice on how to find a wife", then the translation must be "advice on how to find a wife". The similarly in content between the original and final text are considered to be of secondary importance. One "beautiful piece of poetry" may refer to flowers and sunshine, while the one that "translates" it may talk of the armistice at the end of a battle. As long as the description given remains common to both, the latter will be a correct "translation" according to this descriptive approach. A text on "how to find a wife" will of course be very different in dominant British/American dating culture than in a Hindu Indian arranged-marriage culture, and so on.
Missionaries and theologians need to consider carefully just when a descriptive approach is appropriate. Most Scriptural translation has not followed this methodology; hence it is the words (or "meanings") of poetry that are translated into versions of Bibles in contemporary languages, and not it"s rhyme or cadence. The book of Proverbs (for example), while containing wisdom from the ancients, can be totally non-poetic in contemporary languages. The descriptive approach should certainly be considered if one is asked to translate a book on "how to plant a successful church" from American English to African English or another African language. Is it important that words, sentences or even paragraphs in the translation be recognisably similar to those of the original book? Or should the translator write another which fits the same description of "how to plant a church" that works in the African context? The same applies to preachers and teachers. Should a missionary teacher tell his "foreign" audience how "they do it at home", or is it more helpful to discuss what works in his new host culture? The latter is only possible once s/he has become familiar with the culture. (Should a visiting preacher not go about this process of translation, then s/he is in effect leaving it for the locals to do so.)
Mojola and Wendland go on to consider the text-linguistic approach. This looks at turbulence or dynamism in texts, especially where it has an important role to play. An American advising his fellow pastor to take a second wife in order to resolve a certain issue has a turbulence arising from its incongruity, yet translated literally into many African contexts (especially of some indigenous churches) such textual turbulence may totally disappear and advice given can be assumed to be very serious. For the African pastor an alternative suggestion would need to be made to give the text the same turbulence. (This suggestion being dependent on the African person"s culture cannot easily be made without causing misunderstanding amongst the target readership of this article who are non-African.) The question of turbulence should be born in mind by Bible translators and in Christian ministry. People taking a message from one cultural context to another may unknowingly be creating turbulence by their preaching and teaching.
Relevance theory explains how meaning and influence can be derived from the impact of words onto a person. It explains why "verbal communication typically conveys much more than is linguistically encoded" (Sperber and Wilson 1997:np). It considers what it is "which makes information worth processing for the human being" (Sperber and Wilson 1995:46). Sperber and Wilson assume utterances to be capable of (often widely) different interpretation. The principle which the reader or hearer uses to derive appropriate (or the correct) meaning is relevance; the correct meaning is that which has "the greatest possible contextual effect for the smallest possible processing effort" (Sperber and Wilson 1995:vii). That is, a hearer (or reader) implicitly assumes that someone communicating with them is assuming the listener to assume that what they are trying to communicate with their words is the one of the many possible understandings that demands the least processing effort, while having the greatest contextual impact. For details on this complex but profound and widely acclaimed theory see Sperber and Wilson"s text. (I found this theory being taught for the first time to Bible translators in Kenya at the Bible Translation and Literary Conference Centre in Ruiru, Nairobi in August 2006 (Gutt 2006).)
Postcolonial approaches to translation consider its power implications. Taking translation as always being to do with questions of authority and influence this approach assumes that preachers or Bible teachers will do their task in such a way as to benefit themselves or their people. Translation, according to the post-colonial critics, can never be a neutral or uninterested affair. For example, a European rendering of the prodigal son, will portray the father as a missionary-like figure, whereas a local African will portray him as African! (Assuming "missionaries" to be European people taking the Gospel to African people.)
I have already alluded to the increased respectability of literalist translations following the collapse of the dynamic equivalence model of interpretation. Retaining equivalents to original words in the original order may be more important in translation than correct grammar. This can be illustrated by comparing English as against Kiswahili means of listing adjectives. In English one instinctively says "a big, red brick house" while the Kiswahili rendering would naturally be "house big red of bricks". The English word ordering leaves the reader (or the hearer) in suspense over what is to be described, whereas the Kiswahili word order, produces suspense over the nature of the described item! To correctly render this suspense in translations between Kiswahili and English may require incorrect grammar.
Venuti recognises that "Translation wields enormous power in constructing representations of foreign cultures" (Venuti 1998:67). He points out that translators choose between making a text appear to be domestic, or retaining an apparent foreignness. The impact of words being unique to a particular language means that a translation into a different language (or culture) can never be 100% accurate. Yet the translator can conceal or reveal that heterogeneity / foreignness. A reader or listener may be helped to know that they are on unfamiliar territory by the maintenance of foreign words in the target language. Insisting that every foreign word be translated by an indigenous one is domesticating a text. Many English theological terms being used in non-English theological texts shows an ongoing tension with that "English" worldview. Translating every word would result in the text being a less accurate representation of the English original. Domestification can obscure very real cultural differences from view, whereas incorporating foreign words can reduce flow and increase reading difficulty. Translators have to choose which route to follow, and that choice will have ongoing interpretative ramifications.
3. Some Suggestions as to the nature of Appropriate Biblical Interpretation
In the light of the above, a few recommendations can be made regarding the most appropriate principles of cross-cultural Biblical interpretation for use in cross-cultural contexts today:
a. In order to achieve comparability in a shrinking multicultural world, I suggest that translators make greater efforts at following the word order and sentence structure of original texts, even with the loss of grammatical flow in the target language. This is especially important in the case of translations, such as in English, if they could end up being used by people of many different native languages / cultures.
b. Already alluded to above, is the importance of translating from original Biblical languages, and not English or other language"s paraphrases or dynamic equivalence versions.
c. Discourage the use of a lot of computers in Bible translation in non-Western languages. For translations to be "owned" by the people of a language, and to keep the translator near to the people, s/he cannot afford to be working with computers in public in contemporary Africa. Any such work should be consigned to non-field stations, such as at a capital city, central mission station etc. Pens and papers are less attractive to thieves and rogues, less invocative of jealousy, more familiar and easy to imitate, circulate and comprehend.
d. Translators may need to be ready to make translations that they do not themselves understand if they are not very conversant with the culture associated with the target language. Understanding that is clear to indigenous readers may not be so to a foreign translator.
e. Translators should bear in mind that, according to relevance theory, people will seek understanding through searching for options that are easy to process and have significant impacts. This will involve the application of reason that for many people in the world will be non-scientific in nature.
f. The translator should avoid favouring themselves and own people or culture.
g. Domestification may or may not be a help in translation. Retaining foreign phrases or clumsy grammar ensures that listeners / readers appreciate that they are receiving something ancient and foreign that may require special care in interpretation.
4. Translating People and Projects
As already emphasised in this article ; consideration of translation issues should not stop with the Bible. Many more texts of all sorts in addition to the Bible are these days being transported to Africa. These include whole educational systems, languages, technological manuals of all sorts, radio and television broadcasts, recipes, novels, Christian teachings, theologies and even political ideologies. What happens to these on impacting the African scene?
If, as we have already shown, the words (sentences and paragraphs) etc. that make up these programmes are dependent for their interpretation on their context, and given that the context is different in Africa from the European one, it is important to ask how these texts are transformed. Comaroff and Comaroff have considered this question in terms of "Afromodernity". They tell us that modernity, is firmly rooted amongst people originating in Europe but that "all other modernity"s are mimics of a real thing whose full realisation elsewhere is, at best, infinitely deferred (referring to work by Bhabha 1994), at worst, flatly impossible" (2004:331). They go on to say that " the various modernity"s of African colonies contrasted markedly with modernity at the metropole and with each other " (2004:332). The apparent movement of modernity from Europe to Africa has made Africa"s "violence and magic scandalously visible" (2004:333) they add. Then using the label "liberalisation" Comaroff and Comaroff tell us that "The impact of liberalisation on ordinary lives across the continent appears to be persuading more and more people that mysterious forces are at work in the accumulation of wealth and power" (2004:340). Such a position is strongly supported by Blunt in his research on Kenya: "Africa"s occult beliefs have kept pace with Africa"s particular forms of modernity" (2004:304) he tells us. In a section of his work entitled "Accessing the modern via the pre-modern" Balcomb tells us that:
The fruits of the developed world, however, were too powerfully alluring to be ignored. They offered a lifestyle too attractive to be denied. But the relationship between the "goods" offered in this lifestyle and the means by which these goods could be attained was continuously misunderstood. It was still believed by many that the goods of modernity could be accessed by pre-modern means. This had many manifestations. Two may be cited. One is the Cargo Cult syndrome and the other is witchcraft, .... (1996:np)
" the African ability to integrate diverse cultural elements without the contradictions raised by the more dualist thinking of the West" Balcomb goes on to tell us " could also provide a hermeneutical key for understanding many of the cultural, political, and religious phenomena of modern Africa" (1996:np). Going back further to one of the groundbreaking scholars of African religion Placide Tempels, we find that the "Bantu [a large ethnic group that dominates the population of many African countries] speak, act, and live as if, for them, beings were forces " (1959:51). Tempels advises us that in order to study the Bantu on their own terms, " we must make a clean sweep of our own psychological concepts " (1959:96). Once having done that we will realise that "every act which militates against vital force or against the increase of the hierarchy of the "Muntu" is bad" (Tempels 1959:121). In order to avoid the perpetual widening of the gap between Black and White, says Tempels, "we must devote ourselves to the service of the life which is already theirs" (1959:179). (Tempels" insights are particularly valuable because, although writing some time ago, he had a long term deep exposure to African people, before the widespread incursion of foreign languages that causes so much confusion today.)
Tempels also tells us that "what they [the Bantu, i.e. the Africans] want more than anything else is not improvement of their economic or material circumstances, but recognition of and respect for their full value as men by the Whites" (1959:178). This is where, I suggest, Whites have failed the African people. Instead of taking "their" approach to life seriously, Whites have ever since Tempels day and nowadays increasingly attempted to force the African to accept their (White) way of looking at the world. This pressure, combined with the African people"s desire for "recognition and respect as men" has given them two options. That is, either to stand by the truth of "who they are" and be considered primitive, or overtly to acknowledge the White man"s ways and be respected, even though living a lie. (That is, to use language in a different way to that widely accepted by Westerners.)
We can add to this another factor that makes it very difficult for African people to express their culture and way of life to Whites. "Our terms can furnish only an approximation to concepts and principles foreign to us" said Tempels (1959:39). That is to say English (European languages) does not have the vocabulary or semantic range to accurately describe African religions, beliefs, and philosophies. As a result discussions about African culture, values and ways of life engaged in using English can only ever be approximations to the "truth". These approximations being often received negatively by native English speakers has contributed to the trend of African scholars publicly denying who they are for the sake of the respect of the West. The thinking is, very correctly, that African people cannot allow the modern world to pass them by without participating in it. At the same time they cannot participate in that modern world without denying a part of who they are. Scholars are forced to deny their heritage for the sake of international respectability, then return to and address, engage with and share in that "heritage" when they go home. This refusal to take "the other" seriously on the part of Western scholarship unfortunately has the effect now of isolating a great deal of it from what is happening on the ground in Africa. This is, it seems to me, a very serious situation, given the amount of power that the West these days holds over vast numbers of African people, their countries and their economies.
Westerners working in Africa and with Africans need to very carefully consider this dilemma. Their failing to do so is resulting in the horrific current track record of "projects" in Africa. A cycle can be seen constantly repeating itself: in order to be considered respect worthy, Westerners have to assume African people to be the same as themselves. They therefore design projects and interventions on that basis ; by ignoring the actual nature of the African people. The failure of projects is concealed or hush hushed so as not to reveal the "difference" that is there in the African culture or way of life, again out of respect. This unfortunately means that, the next person who comes along again sets about designing another project by repeating the same blunder! At root of this is the failure on the part of the West to come to terms with "difference".
To take us back to the discussion of translation above, we should have learned a number of important lessons. The folly of dominant linguistic models in use in the West has been that they assume the ability to communicate meaning inter-culturally with the use of words. (When in reality meaning arises when words interact with "contexts", in the very broad sense of the word.) This is well illustrated by the ongoing widespread use of the dynamic equivalence model of translation, despite its serious weaknesses. This is in turn resulting in an ongoing self-deception regarding global realities on the part of the West. Such self-deception is very dangerous in the current globalised world, resulting in poor decisions being imposed on much of the world"s population through the ignorance of powerful Western scholars, and in turn activists and policy makers. Those representing the "misunderstood" cultures of the world are meanwhile silenced through the inability of English to articulate their concerns, and their (very understandable) need to be respected in the international arena.
5. The Horror of "Western Languages" in Africa
International languages have their place, in enabling international communication. The use of international languages in exacting close control over other linguistic communities is however like a cruel bludgeon to non-native speakers (especially those of very distant cultures) who are thereby obliged to accept their own backwardness and concede to not having a voice in their own community. This certainly applies to much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where country after country has seen no alternative but to adopt European languages to "officially" govern their own people.
How can the "West" be held accountable for this language dilemma of free countries? Partly, I suggest, through the peculiar way in which "nation states" in Africa have been formed. That is, the old colonial powers have to date failed to release the African people for self-rule through their ongoing support of the elitist structures that they originally set up.
Strong nations have often conquered weaker nations. There is nothing new in that. What is new, is for foreigners to maintain a strong hold over empires by keeping a grasp on purse strings, in the absence of effective authority or human presence, long after having supposedly been ousted from power. Such control via faceless bureaucracy from a "safe" distance (foreign capitals thousands of miles away) when considered in the light of the prior parts of this essay, have been and continue to be a recipe for calamity. A major step towards solution of this dilemma here proposed ; is a conscious withdrawal of outside support that is specifically given for the use of Western languages in education and governance of (in the cases here considered) African peoples.
Before going to look at examples of the problems mentioned above in more detail, I want to expand a little more on the unique aspects of foreign control that have been enabled by modern technology. In previous era"s rulers may at times have been cruel. But in order to "control" a people, they have had to have a presence. Being present in a multilingual contexts means that they (or their deputies) have been obliged to learn local tongues. It means that they have had to get a grasp on local cultures. It means also that they and their staff have been visible to local people. In being visible in their full humanity, strengths and weaknesses and with familiarity with local languages and customs, local people have been able to adapt and learn from their "oppressors" (or conquering race). Languages were "in those days", the time of the spread of Hellenism can be taken as example, spread through people and the resultant social and intellectual interaction. This is a far cry from today"s internet based society. A far cry from the abilities of publishers to duplicate their efforts into the thousands and millions so that, many African schoolchildren are these days forced to learn (foreign) English in their schools, without ever speaking to a native English speaker! To say that a country is independent and making its own decisions is no excuse, because foreigners continue to control through their use of purse strings.
I want to consider in more detail just what it means to reside in a country dominated by a foreign language. Kenya, in which I have now lived for 14 years, is an example in which native languages are relegated to third place behind English (official language) and Kiswahili (national language). (While I have mentioned Kiswahili, its deep roots in African soil, and its being very much an oral language, means that it has few of the problems of English.) One effect of this relegation of local languages is to discourage people from thinking. Profound, or even simple thoughts in MT (mother tongue) languages are valued by hardly anyone, and have negligible or no influence on the circumstances of life because these are dominated by English. Instead local people are taught to leave the thinking to foreigners. The "thinking" that they remain with, is how to drain foreign resources in their direction, by means often tainted with "corruption". Very few people can engage effectively with the international community that is dominating their lives. Those that can have acquired the ability at great expense and through extensive exposure to Western people and languages. (And even then as mentioned above, the very international community does not have the linguistic means to listen to their concerns.)
Domination by a foreign languages kills local initiative. I can give theological training initiatives by way of example. Having been teaching and closely involved in a locally based local-language theological training programme in Kenya for over 13 years, I have observed that we always operate under the shadow of powerful foreign competitors. English-language alternatives offer career opportunities with good salary options, prestige and international recognition, free accommodation, good food, formal curricula, a variety of teachers, all as benefits to be gained for those who will accept learning things that are of marginal relevance to their own cultures and own people. (Much of the relevance that is there, and not to be scoffed at in the "real" world, arises because internationally recognised knowledge can attract international funding and support.) Our local programme working in local languages with people who are closely involved in day to day church affairs can barely gain respect or prestige as long as foreigners are (economically) imposing their linguistically misplaced wisdom as incentives to the more mobile and more able. (Whereas one may suppose that people would value that which is of local pertinence over and above the foreign and irrelevant, in fact assisted by the "magical" basis to African life already mentioned above (and below), they have instead appropriated the "prosperity Gospel" as a means of understanding that God himself stands behind the ignorance of the "Whites". See Harries 2006a.) It seems clear that capable local people who could be making a place for the church in a diverse "civil society" in Africa have realised that this is not an option. They are forced instead to either remain within the traditional African worldview, hence the continuing and growing importance of funerals and death rituals in much of Africa, or on leaving that world engage in redirecting foreign funds and influence in their direction ; much as, in fact, their forefathers did with "mystical" or "witchcraft" powers ; often by "corrupt" means.
As already alluded to above, the foreign cannot be considered totally "irrelevant", because of its profound impact on local society mitigated by its being central to power issues connected with central government, and its capability at drawing relationship, recognition and finance from the international community. The locally indecipherable codes that constitute "foreign oriented debate" are powerful despite their nonsense. This to the extent that they begin to have a sense of their own. The above discussion (Section 4) will have shown the orientation of the African people to (areas that English cannot grasp so we can only allude to as) magic, which is the category that is now being expanded in much of Sub-Saharan Africa to accommodate "the foreign". That is, terms, phrases, sentences and texts that make rational-sense to those with a Western mind can be valued in Africa as magical idioms. And indeed powerful they are, as Westerners are strongly accustomed to responding charitably to those who succeed in reflecting back "their" own views of the world and of what is right and wrong. (Much as a successful student can be the one who tells his teacher what he wants to hear, whether or not the student has actually understood what is being taught.) This of course applies inside and outside of the church.
It should be clear to the reader that what I am here presenting is a "Westerners" perspective on the African scene. That is, one could not expect African people themselves to make the observations above. They are barely visible by local people from "within". This illustrates how academia cannot allow itself to be multicultural in its inputs if it is to be broad or multicultural in its output. Such insider-views by Westerners are extremely rare these days, for many reasons (some of which are discussed above) that keep Westerners on the margins of African society.
Taking another view on the Western side, the failure of "education" in foreign languages to perpetuate itself in Africa is what is resulting in it being the prerogative of the West to continue to lead in the educational field from afar. I refer particularly to theological education, with which I am familiar. Formal theological education facilities on the African continent are almost invariably Western funded, and very often also Western managed. The transfer of Western theological know-how onto the continent is a vast and complex operation that absorbs enormous quantities of the time and energy of "missionaries" engaged in it. A heavy concentration of effort is required to push the required knowledge onto the Africa front until it is finally ready for appropriation by the African people, usually under some foreign scholarship system. This process becomes more and more difficult and requires greater and greater efforts to reach the higher echelons of educational achievement. (i.e., it is more difficult to offer an MA by extension to an African site than a BA, and so on.) This major administrative and financially draining effort is precluding alternative options for missionaries, particularly those of actually getting close to a foreign people so as to be able to operate from a position of understanding, receive relevant feedback to adjust and adapt the education they are offering and get it to a position of local relevance and ownership where it can become self propagating. The counterfactual to the current drive to encourage the adoption of Western education in Africa is not "zero". That is, removing the requirement of Western educational impact should not mean that nothing is put into its place! Rather a much improved mutual understanding between West and non-West could be bringing many fruits that are nowadays "unknown".
Western people, native English speakers being mainly in focus, appear not to realise that teaching someone your language is orienting them to your culture. Teaching African people English is not primarily giving them a tool to use amongst their own societies, but a way of creating and then perpetuating their dependence on native English speaking countries. This orientation to "the foreign" throughout a society (as it is in many African countries) is an excellent way of encouraging people to devalue their own selves. This is for many reasons, including that it is extremely difficult for a non-native to compete with a native speaker in any linguistic field. (Other reasons are given above and below in this article.) When the president of an African country presents a speech in English, one has to ask oneself who he is really talking to? (Perhaps to donors or potential donors and not to his citizens.) There is something wrong when a small child from a distant country could correct a president of an African country in his use of his own official language.
I have often heard African nationals explain that they have no choice but to use English, because they have no other language that will unite their country. But now I need to ask ; whose fault is that? Who was it that divided up the African people into the nation states extant up to today? Then more seriously ; whoever perpetuates the situation which makes it impossible for people to use familiar languages by using overseas finance to prop up government structures once set up by colonial powers is surely responsible, at least to a large part, for the continuing depravity of the people concerned. To give an example that illustrates this difficulty: would the British agree to becoming one with France, on condition that the official language for all official business be Chinese because it is recognised that they could otherwise never agree to either English or French alone being used, and to accept the rule of one country using two languages is impractical? Imagine prohibiting the use of English in favour of Chinese in all official circles in the UK. If the British are not ready to agree to such, then should they continue to impose the same conditions on others?
My reason for paying such attention to these political factors in this article aimed at missionaries is to help them to appreciate how loaded a decision it is to use a Western language in Africa. They thereby support oppressive foreign policy decrees emanating from their home countries. Simply to bow to "the will of the nationals" if they are themselves responding to such outside pressures is a poor excuse. The situation in much of Anglophone Africa that is forcing incompetence on its citizens is surely an infringement of God"s will for his people that Christians should not voluntarily support.
The outcome of these policies is in East Africa diabolical, and appears to be ever worsening as modern technologies and vibrant foreign economies assist wealthy countries to have an ever closer controlling influence over once free-thinking peoples. More and more of what people "ought" to be doing for themselves is having to be done for them. An epitome of this is the Millenium Development Goals ; a kind of blanket "do everything for the people" policy that assumes them to be and that could all too easily render them into being incompetent in their very own communities! (I share this from personal experience through living in one of the MDG target villages.) Inside and outside of the church, but I suggest that the church should lead the way, it is time that the international community began to assist people to develop themselves instead of continuing to attempt to deprive them of the capacity they retain of communicating and functioning in their own languages.
Yes, African people would stand to gain a lot through learning from "the West", as has much of the globe, and I would be the last to say that people should not travel and interact or learn a European tongue as a second language. But, assisting someone else develop their own language and culture is like "teaching someone to fish", whereas forcing foreign wisdom onto them in foreign tongues is comparable to "giving them a fish". This has been proven over and over around the world; none of the powerful nations of the world today operate on someone else"s language. That is the privilege of the poorest countries. Further oppression of this nature is close to criminal ; and the church should not willingly be a part of it.
I have already addressed other issues closely related to this debate in an article called Language in Education, Mission and Development in Africa: appeals for local tongues and local contexts (Harries 2006b) that could helpfully be read by a reader of this article at this stage. Having to work in a foreign language that is not linked at depth with the culture of its users causes at very least confusion ; particularly if the very language is also still to be used with its originators (and therefore cannot successfully be "appropriated"). Foreigners in turn are given a false sense of familiarity in the culture that they are exploring, resulting in overconfidence in making decisions, which is particularly damaging considering the financial power that they often wield in Africa today.
6. Be Informed in Frontier Mission Contexts
The fact that missiological literature is resplendent with examples of how the churches grow more quickly without than with Western missionaries (personal observation that this is a favourite theme) has not prevented the continued application of the same tired out missions methodologies. The implicit problems associated with much Western missionary activity struck me when I realised, from my village home in Western Kenya, that the person who could most easily seriously undermine my ministry would be a fellow Western missionary! My missionary brothers and sisters in Christ who are not very careful in how they use finance and language to buy people and open them up (via modern technology) to the vices of the Western world can be like a plague to those who are seeking to preach Christ without bountiful servings of Western culture. Some unfortunately use donor money to lure people away from the sanctity of the morality of their own peoples into indecipherable foreign dependence.
Then what of frontier missions to unreached peoples, including adherents of Islam, communism and other religions? The "underground" church is the one that avoids the traps mentioned above. Regular activity amongst the unreached (on my observation) often does not. Allow me to give an example, (filling the gaps myself, with some details concealed): A Christian mission operating in a strongly Muslim context set up a project to teach young women profitable means of dying clothes using imported Western technology. This "project" became like a bait luring Muslim girls, who were then plied with Gospel teaching. Surely it is understandable that offering such economic freedom to Muslim girls would offend / threaten doting families concerned for their reputation and so careful to protect the chastity of their daughters? Muslims are known to value women primarily for their domestic roles (Waines 1995:95). The offer of Christianity was coming hand in hand with openings into apparent immorality. Could any self-respecting father be pleased to allow his daughter to be allured to an immoral life by such inconsiderate foreigners? Any suggestion to the Christians that what they were doing was inappropriate would of course have been interpreted as being an anti-Christian reaction. Reasoning with the initiators of this project not being an option, meant that the only alternative left to the Muslim community was to try to eject this so-called "frontier mission" group altogether. It is sad when mission is ejected because it is an inducement to immorality.
A guide that is too little applied is asking whether that which is done by frontier mission initiatives would be acceptable to a Christian community in the same or a related cultural context / ethnic group? It would seem wise for frontier mission personnel to get at least a part of their training from local Christians to avoid creating barriers with them and unnecessarily despoiling the name of the church through inappropriate activities. In my own East African context, I would suggest that foreign missionaries wanting to reach Muslims would helpfully first work with local Christian churches, especially AICs (African Indigenous Churches) that are closely in tune with deep African culture. I do such work with indigenous churches, but no Islamic-outreach group has ever deigned to ask me for advice or sought an opportunity for mutual assistance. They choose instead, it seems, to plant American or Western churches in African / Muslim contexts even where all neighbouring Christian communities are expressing their faith in more African ways. Too few take the time to discover what an African church is actually like.
Outsiders really need to be clearly informed as to what they are doing before making key decisions affecting numerous people in highly significant ways. Being well informed socially requires a knowledge of local languages that can only be acquired through missionary vulnerability, and such vulnerability typically arises when a missionary embraces "poverty". Hence I advocate that Western missionaries seek to operate from positions of local vulnerability that arise from "poverty" and make use of local languages.
8. Reasons for the Popularity of Inappropriate Missions Methodologies
My reader may be wondering why some of the proposals above are not in line with mainline missiological practice. Why are many missiologists not following the above recommendations if they are as clear and obvious as is suggested by this article? I want to suggest some reasons.
First, many people involved in aid, development or financial provision as well as mission seem not to have realised to what extent such is a trap. In many Western nations people can make choices in terms of occupation and livelihood. Offering a person a salary that is sufficient to live on in return for a service is not manipulative or coercive because someone turning down one offer can find comparable alternatives. That is, people are remunerated according to some reasonable "free-market" standard for that locality. A difficulty arises if an "employer" comes from a foreign context in which remuneration rates are much higher than in the country being targeted. To pay someone local rates can seem ridiculous by comparison with rates of pay in his home country. The employer may come under pressure from his home-country to pay more. Unfortunately, as soon as rewards for services come to be higher than those set by local market forces a distortion enters into the organisation, which results in corruption and lies. Corruption ; because people will be ready to pay bribes (in cash or other forms) in order to get the position concerned. Lies, because they will find it advantageous not to be truthful (often under family and extended family pressure) to an (ignorant foreign who appears to have endless sources of money) employer rather than face being laid off. Once accustomed to a higher salary level giving up one"s position can be calamitous for the person concerned as well as dependents in the extended family, thus making someone very reluctant to give up a position or very bitter if they are given the shove. People "trapped" in this way cannot be expected to offer advice, no matter how pertinent, that threatens the status quo that maintains them.
Offering aid to a community is putting oneself into a "trap". Saying "I have $20,000 that I want to give you if you want it" is asking for trouble. The only way to give a community leader (however chosen) the freedom to refuse your offer without potentially getting him(her)self into a lot of trouble if they refuse is to make it while sworn to secrecy. (That is assuming that they can trust you enough to believe that you can be relied upon to keep the secret.) This is because should the members of the community concerned hear that their leader turned down a generous offer of aid, and especially if the finance has now instead gone to a neighbouring community, the leader concerned will have a serious problem to contend with that will certainly cost him popularity and may result in his loosing his position altogether. Unless that is, the leader manages to convince the people that the potential donor is a liar with some heinous hidden agenda. The latter is not usually the response being sought for by those offering aid, but at least this should help to demonstrate why some communities label wealthy potential donors as "evil" to avoid being swamped by well meaning (perhaps) but damaging foreign control. (Imagine that your boss offers you a pay rise in earshot of your spouse. What kind of conversation will you have at home later that day if you decide to turn her/him down?)
The computer that dominates much of life in the West today brings problems through its attuning of the human mind to its mechanical logic. Young people especially who are brought up in interaction with computers are bound to be affected by it. This is the very reasoning that they will then seek to apply when they "meet" Third World problems - as if they are computer problems. Ancient "wisdom" is thrown out of the window. I suggest that the logical mind that is needed to solve computer problems is not always the best when it comes to resolving many complex Third World issues.
Western oriented elites are usually the only people that foreigners have access to, either because of their geographical location (in the West, in expensive areas of town or as owners of vehicles) and / or because they are the only ones who have a sufficient grasp of Western language and culture so as to be able to have a sensible conversation with a Westerner. When people refer to "speaking to the locals", they almost invariably mean just this kind of person. Very often this kind of person can have great influence in swaying opinions, as s/he is taken as a bridge that connects disparate cultures.
This situation needs some careful examination. Linguistically, someone brought up in one community can never, I suggest, understand those of another to the extent of a native-born person. Such an elite person as described above rarely understands the West with any profundity or depth. As discussed above, many African elites fill the gaps in their understanding of the West using their comprehension of "magic" (i.e. aspects of their culture that are outside of Western worldviews and experience). Usually such a person is already in a "trap" such as the ones mentioned above; their ongoing supply of funds being dependent on them speaking and behaving in certain ways to please their wealthy donors regardless of their actual heart orientation. Frankly, these elites often stand to gain the most from aid and donor policies. This is for many reasons, such as that they often own the businesses that handle foreign funds and sell to donors. The elites can even devise religious positions to justify their stand in relation to donors ; such as "prosperity Gospel". The elites can be yes-men. A prerequisite for a foreigner to know "what the people really want" and certainly then to know what will actually help them, is at the very least to learn a local language and interact with a wider populace from a position of economic (and other kinds of) vulnerability. That there are very few Western Christians doing this today is a disgrace to the church.
Closely related to this and already referred to above is the poor understanding of the translation process by many would-be donors and development experts. Given the close association between "meaning" and "context" of the use of words already mentioned above, it should be clear that Westerners cannot understand non-Western people through the use of language alone. The wide spread of the English language globally today makes native English people, in particular those who are monolingual, especially vulnerable to deception (intentional or otherwise).
So then, why do Westerners not take the trouble to learn the ways of life of the African people? I suggest the reason is firstly that it is difficult, and secondly quite frankly they are scared. Moving into another person"s culture has many difficulties, usually compounded the greater the gap being bridged. The increasing material and financial dependence of "normal" lifestyles in the West is creating an ever widening gap between Westerners and the non-Western world. The reputation of Africa as missionary graveyard, as infested with malaria causing mosquitoes, fierce wild animals and snakes, frequent bloodshed and war, hunger, famine and extreme poverty deters many Westerners from desiring close fellowship with African communities. Hence the myth that one can "help" distant peoples while living in one"s comfortable home sitting at one"s computer console, using one"s own language and through studying theoretical issues in local universities with just occasional dramatic adventurous excursions into foreign climes, is extremely popular.
Summary and Conclusion
This article assumes that the meaning of words arises from the context of their use. This often little-realised truth forms the basis for a critique of the dynamic equivalence theory of translation, particularly in inter-cultural perspective. Foreign texts are found to communicate a foreign culture, and not their intended content. A brief examination of alternatives illustrates that dynamic equivalence is far from the only option available to translators. Other options include translation based on function, description, turbulence, relevance, power-interests, domestification or its avoidance, and so on. A short list of specific recommendations is given to Bible translators.
The questions raised on translation are pertinent to all areas of intercultural communication. Serious weaknesses in prior translation practices in projects, policies and diverse kinds of international and intercultural exchanges are considered. Careful examination of the economic and power implications of missionaries" actions, drawing on the author"s own practical experience, leads to the suggestion that it is immoral to force dependency on unworkable language policies onto African people. The nature and capabilities brought by modern technology are found to aggravate this problem, from which it is suggested that the church needs to distance itself. The importance of this is emphasised for frontier mission contexts. Because communication with locals is hindered by the religious stand-off of frontier mission situations, misunderstandings are particularly likely to arise at the "frontier". The peculiar economic dynamics arising from intercultural mission relationships between non-West and West are shown as being largely responsible for perpetuation of the negative and unhelpful practices mentioned above. Western missionary vulnerability and linguistic acumen are advocated as the means for overcoming them.
The limitations in popular wisdom regarding language and translation found in this article suggest the need for an urgent turn-around in 21st Century missions practices. Contrary to popular wisdom and perhaps outward appearance, discovery of a key to the resolution of Sub-Saharan African problems will require operating from within the African cultural milieu and languages concerned. To seek a solution from the throes of Western academia in European languages is to postpone the call for African people to come to terms with their own ways of life and position in the world. Such postponement, if it continues to detract attention from key issues to its own invented solutions, could spell catastrophe for African societies in the years ahead.
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