Not long ago I ran across a modern translation of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy on death. Shakespeare’s original is on the page above it, providing a most instructive comparison.
The translation does a fine job of capturing the passage’s propositional content. I can imagine how much it might help a student reading Shakespeare for the first time. What’s a fardel? or a bare bodkin? The modern rendition clarifies such things nicely. It is, one might say, perfectly not wrong.
It is a good thing to be not wrong. If this page had translated “fardels” as long and burdensome journeys, or “contumely” as fancy, foppish fashion, it would have been misleading, useless, even dangerous in a way.
Still it is possible to be not wrong and at the same time be perfectly dry and colorless, practically dead. This translation page illustrates the point magnificently. Read the translation; then read the original. On one level they mean quite the same thing, yet they could hardly be more different. There is a rightness to Shakespeare’s original that far transcends the not-wrongness of its propositional content as conveyed in the translation.
I think many Christians work hard at translating the Gospel’s propositional content into modern language. We can recognize error a mile away, and we’re quick to correct it. We make it our business, one might say, to be perfectly not wrong.
It is important that we be true in this way. To be wrong is, well, wrong.
Still there is a rightness that transcends not-wrongness. It is the artistry of living a full-color life: a life of creativity, a life of exploration rather than of self-protection, a life of abandonment to God and to others. It is not only not wrong: it is right.
January 28th, 2012 | 5:40 pm | #1
A quick footnote lest I be misunderstood as criticizing the translation for reasons that have nothing to do with what it was written for: The modern translation on that web page is a fine idea and very helpful for its intended purpose.
January 30th, 2012 | 11:43 am | #2
I wonder — is it really “not wrong” to denude something of the spirit of the original by flattening it too much? Is something really still “accurate” if all the words are right, but it doesn’t convey the same thing anymore?
Maybe there’s more to rightness (or even not-wrongness) than a mathematical correspondence between word meanings?
I realize that’s sort of what you’re saying, but I wonder if you aren’t giving away too much even in conceding that such a minimalist view of “not-wrongness” is not wrong?
January 30th, 2012 | 12:30 pm | #3
And BTW, I also take your point about how the parallel “translation” is not a bad thing if it helps you understand word meanings in the original, as long as you have the original there.
January 30th, 2012 | 1:10 pm | #4
Good question, pentamom. I think you’ve said what I was trying to say about not-wrongness. It’s possible to be not-wrong in this sense and yet be very far from right.
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