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theses

This thesis is based on an original translation into Spanish of the first ninety-eight pages of the book Glimpses of Eternity: Studies in the Parables of Jesus by Paul Earnhart. I have always been interested in words on religious topics, especially expositions of Scripture. In this case, both this particular book as well as the author in general have had a positive impact on me personally, which is why I wanted to do this translation, since up until now no Spanish translation exists. My hope is that it may be disseminated and thereby be of benefit to others. As an academic exercise, the text presents a variety of translation challenges. Firstly, it must be noted that I chose to translate from my native language (English) to a non-dominant language (Spanish). The difficulty in such efforts is to produce a text that sounds natural for a reader in the target language, and for this reason I have depended on the opinion of native speakers in many cases. Furthermore, within certain limits, stylistic changes may be made to regularize the language by employing more appropriate constructions for the target language. For example, I tried to combine short sentences into just one (as is more common in Spanish), to use active instead of passive verbs, using more intensive words, etc. However, the author’s personal style, even in English – his own unique voice and way of expressing himself – must be taken into consideration, and one would do well to be faithful to this when translating his material. His writing style is characterized by a high register in certain occasions, and almost colloquial in others, including the use of idiomatic expressions, besides his own semantic inventions to pain a verbal picture. Therefore, the desired product will retain these traits even as it avoids mistakes typically made by a non-native speaker that detracts from the reading experience. A consideration for such works, which so often quote passages of Scripture, is which version of the Bible to use in the translation. In all the allusions to another work (the Bible), we see a kind of intertextuality. It would not be appropriate for someone to make their own translation of the verses quoted in the book, first of all because that would actually be a double translation (GR>EN>ES) and secondly, because established translations already exist. The issue is which to use. The key in this decision is to determine, keeping in mind the convictions and purposes that the author has, which version would he use were he speaking in the target language. The basic debate in Christian circles regarding Biblical translations centers around the degree in which it is permissible to conform the Hebrew and Greek to modern language and use. Some speak of “literal” versus “dynamic,” and others of “word for word” versus “thought for thought.” The author’s selection of the New King James Version indicates that he has a preference for the “literal” side (though, of course, no strictly “word for word” translation exists because it is impossible), which makes sense in work like the present one, which proposes to explain a passage’s meaning, instead of incorporating that exposition in the actual translation like the versions that liberally employ paraphrase (“thought for thought”), like The New Living Translation or The Good News Bible. For this reason, in my judgment it is most likely that were the author writing in Spanish, he would use the Reina Valera 1960, which, apart from generally being considered parallel to the NKJV, is the most popular among non-Catholic Christians. In rare cases, the text of the Reina Valera does not lend itself to the author’s point, and at such times it is necessary to use another version with an alternative reading, along with a note, as I did on page 39. A similar problem is the translation of hymn citations. Due to its complexity, translation of song is always of interest to translators. In certain cases, there may be established translations already in existence, but in this text there is at least one that I had to translate (Let the Beauty of Jesus be See in Me). Sometimes a hymn does not lend itself to a translation that rhymes and is singable, at least when the translator seeks to retain all of the stanza’s elements. Often it is difficult and even impossible to balance all the different demands when translating hymns. In this case it was possible (p. 65). A difficulty that deserves special attention, if for no other reason than that it is the first word in the very title, is the translation of “glimpses.” There are various options, and I ended up with “vislumbres,” though it is not a very common term, since the definition seems to correspond to the idea of something that doesn’t disappear, but nor does it impart a clear or exact view, but rather blurry. In the parables, as the author explains, what we have is not a perfect but fleeting vision of heavenly truths, but rather a likeness of them that helps us to understand them a little better, though never with full exactness. Beyond all of this, it is important to recognize that the text is specialized (just as a medical, legal, scientific, economic, etc. text would be) in the religious field. In other words, there are terms that in other circumstances are rarely used, but among those that are familiar with subject they do not sound strange. Not only this, but as the parables touch upon a great diversity of aspects of daily life in the Palestine of Jesus’ time (clothing, agriculture, servant-master relationships, economic system, etc.), certain portions of the text may be also seen as specialized in these fields. The only solution is to research these topics. It is my hope that the translation would be useful not only to demonstrate various translation techniques, but also to fulfill for a Spanish-speaking audience the purpose for which the author originally wrote it for his English-speaking readers, the same purpose for which Jesus spoke these parables two thousand years ago to his listeners in Palestine. With this in mind, I thank all my professors, especially those that supervised the project, for their instruction during the course of my translation studies.

ETD_7136

M.A.

Includes bibliographical references

by Brigham Ethan Eubanks

doi:10.7282/T3N87CZH

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.