Are you tight or loose - translatory speaking?

[_J Green]

Simply because tight and loose translations is an apologetic invention. Tight is defined as coming from God word for word, and loose is defined as Joseph being given the story but putting it into his own words.

To the extent these explanations have been advanced by apologists, they are uninformed. From a translation theory perspective, there is no reason why a "tight" translation couldn't come from Joseph and a "loose" translation from God. in my opinion, knowing whether the text is tight or loose (or anything in between) doesn't tell us yet whether Joseph was given the text to simply read for dictation or whether he had a role in the process of choosing words.

Regards

[_Drifting]

drifting writes:

This would be a perfectly reasonable apologetic, had the plates been used by Joseph in the translation process.....

Which doesn't help further the discussion. In what way doesn't it apply with the face in the hat? Is it a translation? Are potentially two texts involved? At what point does it stop working?

Ben M.

Well, without the plates in play one is left with the assumption that God chose to leave the repitition in. He didn't need to. He could have corrected it and thus removed one source of criticism.

[_bcuzbcuz]

]Often, when faced with an unknown phenomenon, we react by approximation:
we seek that scrap of content, already present in our encyclopedia, which for better or worse seems to account for the new fact. A classic example of this process is to be found in Marco Polo, who saw what we now realize were rhinoceroses on Java. Although he had never seen such animals before, by analogy with other known animals he was able to distinguish the body, the four feet, and the horn. Since his culture provided him with the notion of a unicorn—a quadruped with a horn on its forehead, to be precise—he designated those animals as unicorns.

So, he sees something he hasn't seen before, and fits it into his language using a familiar term. Eco continues:

Then, as he was an honest and meticulous chronicler, he hastened to tell us that these unicorns were rather strange—not very good examples of the species, we might say—given that they were not white and slender but had "the hair of the buffalo" and feet "like the feet of an elephant."

Ben M.[/quote]

Your explanation sounds reasonable, even probable.......until you add in the fact that no, I repeat NO, text has ever been found that is the original work of the said Marco Polo. In fact, careful analysis of the text shows that no single person exists as the narrator of the story. Note also that Marco Polo stories contain no mention of the Great Wall, tea or foot binding and according to Marco, the royal family kept dragons as pets. Marco Polo cannot be found and the stories attributed to him, hippopotamus or unicorn, simply are tales. If someone reads unicorn but sees a hippo instead, it is in the eye of the beholder alone. ("Did Marco Polo Go to China?" author Francis Wood, 1998).

[_J Green]

Well, without the plates in play one is left with the assumption that God chose to leave the repitition in. He didn't need to. He could have corrected it and thus removed one source of criticism.

From a believer's perspective, I'm still not convinced that the plates weren't in play. At the very beginning, Joseph copied characters from the plates and looked at them with the U&T. This is a picture of a translation tied to characters on the plates. And after the 116 pages are lost, Joseph presumably transitions to the seer stone placed in the hat. However, the very witnesses (e.g., David Whitmer) that give us Joseph seeing English text in the stone also tell us that he saw the characters as well. So while Joseph wasn't holding the plates, there still seems to be a similar process going on with the translation tied to the characters on the plates.

[_Themis]

I think this argument doesn't work at all, and it fundamentally misunderstands the problems of translation and language. This is the whole issue behind semantic expansion (or loan shifting). The example I like to use is the one that Umberto Eco uses in his book Kant and the Platypus. He starts this way:

While it is a good example of the problems of translating, I don't think it is a good fit for this issue. I think bcuzbcuz makes some good points. The Book of Mormon describes in no more detail in most instances then just using the word horse. So what were Lehi's group seeing. Even though Mormon was writing it down in his own or God's words, it is still their story. First it is unlikely that they would call a tapir a horse for various reason's , and even if they did, it would be more appropriate in this and other instances in the Book of Mormon to use the English equivalent of what they actually saw.

Sure, which is what I keep saying. But it isn't an ancient text, is it.

The Book of Mormon is supposed to be a translation of an ancient text. I am not claiming something different.

[_Themis]

To the extent these explanations have been advanced by apologists, they are uninformed. From a translation theory perspective, there is no reason why a "tight" translation couldn't come from Joseph and a "loose" translation from God. in my opinion, knowing whether the text is tight or loose (or anything in between) doesn't tell us yet whether Joseph was given the text to simply read for dictation or whether he had a role in the process of choosing words.

Regards

Again tight and loose are LDS apologia, and have been defined by them. By definition a tight translation would not come from Joseph, even if God put all the knowledge into him so he could do a secular translation. Secular translations are not tight or loose. Tight is just God giving Joseph word for word, where loose is God giving him the story in some way and Joseph putting it into his own words. The problem for loose is the text itself and the descriptions those around him gave us.

[_J Green]

Again tight and loose are LDS apologia, and have been defined by them. By definition a tight translation would not come from Joseph, even if God put all the knowledge into him so he could do a secular translation. Secular translations are not tight or loose. Tight is just God giving Joseph word for word, where loose is God giving him the story in some way and Joseph putting it into his own words. The problem for loose is the text itself and the descriptions those around him gave us.

I have to disagree. Tight and loose translations are simply points on a translation continuum. The terms themselves belong to the field of translation theory and were not invented by Mormon apologists. Again, there is nothing in the definition of tight translation that means that it couldn't have come from Joseph. A tight translation is simply a translation where the target text more approaches an overly literal correspondence to the source text language structure. The person behind this overly literal translation could very well be God, who feeds the words one by one to Joseph; an angelic person (or persons), whose work is then fed to Joseph word by word (Royal Skousen's theory); or Joseph himself, who through the power of God is able to understand the ancient language by the Spirit and then renders the meaning in an overly literal fashion.

And the same answers could be true for a loose translation or anything in between. God is the author of the loose translation and then delivers this translation to Joseph word for word and Joseph dictates it mechanically. In other words, the style of the translation (loose or tight) is a separate issue from whether or not Joseph dictated something given to him in a mechanical fashion or whether he played a part in choosing the actual words to use in English. Does that make sense?

Regards

[_Themis]

I have to disagree. Tight and loose translations are simply points on a translation continuum. The terms themselves belong to the field of translation theory and were not invented by Mormon apologists.

While they certainly is a spectrum, I do not really see thsee terms being used much. With the Book of Mormon they are used very specifically. Tight being word for word from God and loose being in Joseph's own words.

Again, there is nothing in the definition of tight translation that means that it couldn't have come from Joseph.

Not according to LDS apologia, but somewhat irrelevant to the issue.

A tight translation is simply a translation where the target text more approaches an overly literal correspondence to the source text language structure. The person behind this overly literal translation could very well be God, who feeds the words one by one to Joseph; an angelic person (or persons), whose work is then fed to Joseph word by word (Royal Skousen's theory); or Joseph himself, who through the power of God is able to understand the ancient language by the Spirit and then renders the meaning in an overly literal fashion.

The last describes a loose translation, where the others are tight being word for word, which by the way is all we have. :)

And the same answers could be true for a loose translation or anything in between. God is the author of the loose translation and then delivers this translation to Joseph word for word and Joseph dictates it mechanically. In other words, the style of the translation (loose or tight) is a separate issue from whether or not Joseph dictated something given to him in a mechanical fashion or whether he played a part in choosing the actual words to use in English. Does that make sense?

According to descriptions he got it word for word, which from a believing perspective would make the most sense. Allowing one to put it into their own words would allow far to many mistakes when you don't need to. Apologists like to go there just because the Book of Mormon is poorly written with many mistakes an anachronisms.

[_Runtu]

Right, but God is the author only in a very narrow sense too. Whatever the divine involvement, if Joseph is a read, the Divine is simply conveying the original text into language that can be understood. Nephi, Jacob, Mormon, Moroni, et al., - they are the principals. What I don't want to get lost in all of this is that we still have an original author who is not God, whose ideas are potentially wrong, who is capable of making mistakes as he writes, and so on.

Edit: Clearly the Book of Mormon can't be spoken of as an ancient text in any normative sense. The Book of Mormon is a modern production. It uses (for example) language that is relatively modern. The question ultimately in that regard is whether it is based on an ancient source, or not.

Ben

Ben, that is as good an approach to the text as I've heard from a believing Mormon. You avoid the implied inerrantism in the "loose vs. tight" debate but don't completely throw out the book as Joseph Smith's invention from whole cloth. Seeing Joseph Smith as ideal reader works in that it moves the work from ancient text to modern production. I'm not even sure orthodox Mormons would have a problem with it, though I doubt you'd get a sympathetic ear from church leaders.

[_J Green]

Hi, Themis.

LDS Apologetics is not a monolithic group, and there are very divergent views among them about the translation process. Thus, not all LDS apologists actually believe that what you say they do (i.e., that a tight translation automatically means that Joseph simply dictated a text mechanically). And to the extent that I'm considered an apologists, you're actually conversing with one who doesn't believe it.

Cheers.