Bible Translation - the translation of the text of the books of the Bible from the languages in which they were originally written ( Old Testament - Hebrew with some parts in Aramaic , New Testament - Greek ), into other languages.
As of October 2016, the Bible or its individual books have been translated and published in 3223 modern languages (there are approximately 7 thousand actively used languages in the world), including: the entire text of the Bible in 636 languages, the New Testament in 1442 languages, individual Bible books (at least one full book) - in 1145 languages [1] . The Bible remains the most translated book in the history of mankind [2] , but it is estimated that approximately 1.5 billion people still do not have access to the full text in their native language [1] .
Texts may vary due to translation difficulties. The main reason for translation difficulties is language features.
Content
Bible Translation History
In history, there are cases when the Catholic and Orthodox churches prevented the translation of the Bible into other languages, arguing that in this way its misinterpretation and errors will be prevented. So, in 1079, Pope Gregory VII refused to translate the Bible, stating:
| Those who often reflect on this, it is clear that for good reason the Almighty God wants the Holy Scripture to be secret in some places, because if it were clear to all people, perhaps they would not be appreciated and respected; or it could be misinterpreted by uneducated people, and this would lead to an error [3] |
Under a similar pretext in Russia in 1826, at the request of the highest Orthodox clergy, the Bible Society, which was engaged in translating the Bible into Russian, was banned - the ban on translation continued until 1858 ( more ... ).
Ancient translations
One of the oldest translations of the Old Testament is considered to be Greek. It was completed before our era, known as the Septuagint . There were also ancient translations into Semitic languages - Targum (translation into Aramaic ), Peshitta (translation into Syriac ). Very early translations of the Bible were made into Gothic (presumably the second half of the 4th century), Armenian (432), Georgian (originally translated from Armenian, later corrected by the Greek version [4] , 5th century), Coptic and Old Ethiopian ( Geez ) languages. Some sources speak of the existence of an Arabic translation at that time, although it has not survived to this day. Also, in some cases, Aramaic and Syriac are counted as one language. Thus, it can be almost reliably said that by 500 AD e. Bible translations into 10 languages were made.
Vulgate
Of great importance for the Western Christian world was the Vulgate - a Latin translation of the Bible, carried out in 390-405 by Jerome Stridon . It is no coincidence that the first printed book, made in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg , the inventor of typesetting, was the Latin Bible.
Gothic Bible
The Gothic Bible is considered not only the first of the Bible translations into Germanic languages , but also the first literary work in the Germanic (namely, Gothic ) language. Only fragments of this translation are preserved.
Armenian translation
After the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, the oral tradition of Bible translation developed in Armenia in the first years of the 4th century. A few years after the creation of the Armenian alphabet (406), the Bible was first translated into Armenian from Syriac Peshitta. Repeated translation was made in the next few years after the Council of Ephesus (431 year) . Bible translators into Armenian - Mesrop Mashtots , Sahak Partev , Yeznik Kokhbatsi , Koryun , Hovsep Pagnatsi , Hovhann Ekegezatsi , Ghevond Vardapet and others. The language of the Armenian Bible is classical Old Armenian , today it is the official language of the Armenian Apostolic Church . The Armenian name of the Bible Աստուածաշունչ (Astvacašunč), is translated as “Inspired [scripture]”.
German translations
English translation
In 1380, Oxford professor John Wycliffe made the first handwritten translations of the Vulgate into English. One of Wyclif's followers, Jan Hus, actively preached his idea that people themselves should read the Bible in a language they understand. This was one of the reasons why in 1415 Gus was burned at the stake, using the Wycliffe Bible translation for kindling. Before his death, Gus actually predicted with high accuracy the beginning of the Reformation .
In English-speaking countries, especially in Great Britain and the USA, Bible translations played an important role in the development of various Christian denominations, especially Protestant ones. There are over 500 options for translating into English, including:
- The translation of the New Testament (1525) and several books of the Old Testament by William Tyndale ( en: Tyndale Bible ), which he did not have time to complete: was burned at the stake in 1536.
- Geneva Bible (1560)
- The Douay-Reims Bible ( en: Douay – Rheims Bible , 1582 - NC , 1609 - OT , full revised version in 1750) - translation of the Vulgate
- King James Bible (1611)
- American Standard Translation ( en: American Standard Version , 1901)
- The Bible in Basic English ( en: Bible In Basic English , 1941)
- Revised Standard Translation ( en: Revised Standard Version , 1952)
- Jerusalem Bible ( en: Jerusalem Bible , 1966)
- New English Bible ( en: New English Bible , 1961 - NZ, 1970 - OT)
- Good News Bible ( en: Good News Bible , 1966 - NZ, 1976 - OT)
- New American Bible ( en: New American Bible , 1970)
- New American Standard Bible ( en: New American Standard Bible , 1971)
- The Bible in Live English (1972)
- New International Translation ( en: New International Version , 1978)
- New Translation of King James ( en: New King James Version , 1982)
- Scripture - New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
- The New Jerusalem Bible ( en: New Jerusalem Bible , 1985)
- New Revised Standard Translation ( en: New Revised Standard Version , 1989)
- International Standard Translation ( en: International Standard Version , 2006)
In German
Martin Luther translated the New Testament in early 1522 in just a few months, and worked on the Old Testament from 1522 to 1532 . The first complete Bible translation with apocrypha appeared in Wittenberg in 1534 . The Luther Bible has been repeatedly corrected. The editors made before his death became the final version.
Slavic translations
In Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic
In the ninth century, the brothers Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible into Old Slavonic (a variant of the Old Bulgarian language that was spoken in Soluni ). The first translation into the Slavic language probably used the Glagolitic alphabet , later replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet . Lists from the Cyril and Methodius translation spread among the Eastern Slavs, which contributed to the baptism of Russia. This translation had a significant impact on all subsequent ones.
In the XV century, the Archbishop of Novgorod Gennady set the task of collecting books of Holy Scripture in a single Bible in the Slavic language. He organized a search for parts of the Slavic Bible in monasteries and cathedrals. Part of the books could not be found, and the monk Veniamin translated them from the Latin Vulgate. A copy of the Gennady Bible is preserved to this day. The language of this Bible is called Church Slavonic .
In the first half of the 16th century, a native of Polotsk , doctor of medicine Francis Skorin translated all the Scriptures of the Old Testament into modern Western Russian written language . A translation made by him from the Latin Bible of Jerome was printed in 1517-1525 in Prague and Vilna .
With the advent of typography in Russia, books of scripture began to be printed in Church Slavonic . In 1564, the founder of printing in Russia, Ivan Fedorov, published the book “The Apostle” , which included the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles. In 1581, the complete Church Slavonic Bible was first printed. In 1663, the Bible was published for the first time in Russia in Moscow ( Ostrog was printed abroad).
By decree of Empress Elizabeth in 1751 a carefully corrected Church Slavonic Bible was published, the so-called " Elizabethan " (work on this edition was begun as early as 1712 by decree of Peter I). Her text was verified with an ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint . The Elizabethan Bible, almost unchanged, is still used by the Russian Orthodox Church during worship.
In Polish
The oldest known translation of the Old Testament into Polish is the so-called Queen Sophia Bible , or the Sharoshpatak Bible . This translation was carried out on the initiative of the fourth wife of the King of Poland, Vladislav II Jagaila Sophia Golshanska . The translation was completed in the years 1453-1455, one of the translators was Queen's chaplain Andrei from Jasovits [5] . The translation was made from an earlier Czech translation of the Vulgate . Since 1708, the text of the Bible was kept in the city of Sárospatak in Hungary . Before World War II, this literary monument consisted of 185 surviving sheets containing the Old Testament before Esther's book . During the war, the Bible was destroyed, only a few sheets were preserved.
In Russian
In 1813, the Russian Biblical Society was founded, which set as its goal the printing and distribution of books of Scripture among the peoples of the country. In 1815, after returning from abroad, Emperor Alexander I ordered "to deliver to Russians a way to read the Word of God in their natural Russian language." The Russian Bible Society took responsibility for publishing the scriptures in Russian, and the translation was entrusted to members of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy . In 1818, the first edition of the four Gospels in parallel in Russian and Church Slavonic languages went out of print, and in 1822 the Russian New Testament was first fully printed. Then began to translate and print books of the Old Testament. At the same time, translations of the Holy Scriptures were also made into the languages of other peoples of the Russian Empire.
Some representatives of the highest church authorities negatively related to the activities of the Bible society . They believed that the Bible should be in the hands of the clergy and that the people should not be given the opportunity to read and study it themselves. In 1824, Metropolitan Seraphim asked the king to ban Bible society. In April 1826, by decree of Emperor Nicholas I, the activities of the company were discontinued. Only in 1858 did Emperor Alexander II authorize the translation and printing of the Holy Scriptures in Russian. The translation was to be carried out under the leadership of the Synod (the highest administration of the Orthodox Church). In 1876, the complete Russian Bible was first published. This translation is called the “ synodal ”, as it was published under the direction of the Synod .
The “New Processing” of the Synodal Translation was named in Warsaw in 1939, on the eve of World War II , by the translation of Bernard Goetze, in which individual Church Slavonic words stored in the Synodal Translation were translated into modern language ( more ... ).
In 2001 (New Testament) and 2007 (full Bible), a Translation of the New World , known for its existence in many other languages, was published.
On June 1, 2011, the complete translation of the Bible into Russian, created in Russia, was released - a translation of the Russian Bible Society . Work has been going on for more than 15 years.
In December 2014, the Bible Restoration Translation in Russian was published, which is a new translation of the text of the Old and New Testaments from the original languages.
Bible translations in other languages
Western languages
In the 13th century, scientists at the University of Paris completed a translation of the Bible into French .
In the 15th century, a translation of the Bible into Italian appeared ( Niccolo de Mahlerby ), and in the 16th century into the Spanish language ( Cassiodor de Rein ). In 1488, the Prague Bible was published in Czech ( more ... ). In 1541, a translation of the Bible into Swedish appeared ( Uppsala Bible ). In 1685, German Lutheran pastor Ernst Gluck translated the Bible into Latvian .
Oriental languages
In 1671, the full Bible in Arabic was published in Rome .
The Bible or parts of it were translated in the 19th century, according to existing statistics, into 451 languages, between them the complete Bible in Bengali (1809), Chinese (1822), Sanskrit (1822), Manchu (1835), Hindi (1835), Amharic (1840), Urdu (1843), Javanese (1854), Pashto (1895) [6] . Translation into the Chuvash language was begun in the 19th century, and completed in the 21st century [7] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Scripture & Language Statistics 2015 // Wycliffe Global Alliance
- ↑ The Bible is currently translated into 2527 languages
- ↑ The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions, by Margaret Deanesly, 1920, p. 24. Translation from the book: “The Bible: the word of God or man?”
- ↑ Robert W. Thomson. Rewriting Caucasian History. The Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles. The Original Georgian Texts and the Armenian Adaptation . - Clarendon Press, 1996 .-- P. xxxvii.
- ↑ Andrei from Yasovits // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- ↑ Borislav Arapovich. FROM THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE TRANSLATION
- ↑ Translation of the Holy Scripture into the Chuvash language // Russian Bible Society
Literature
- Biblical translations // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Riga M.I. History of Bible translations in Russia / Otv. ed. Cand. Philos. Sciences A.T. Moskalenko ; Institute of History, Philology and Philosophy SB AS USSR . Novosibirsk State University . - Novosibirsk : Science . Siberian Branch, 1978.- 208 p. - 10,000 copies. (in per.)
- Riga M.I. Russian Bible: History of Bible translations in Russia. - Ed. 2nd. - SPb. : Avalon, ABC classic , 2007 .-- 256 p. - (Russian literature). - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-94860-046-8 ; ISBN 978-5-352-02057-9 . (region)
Links
- Bible in many languages
- Bible translations into ancient languages // Men A.V. Bibliological Dictionary: in 3 vols. - M .: Alexander Me Foundation, 2002.
- Bible translations into Church Slavonic // Men A. V. Bibliological Dictionary: in 3 volumes. - M .: Alexander Me Foundation, 2002.
- Translations of the Bible into Russian // Men A.V. Bibliological Dictionary: in 3 vols. - M .: Alexander Me Foundation, 2002.
- Bible translations into new European languages // Men A. V. Bibliological Dictionary: in 3 volumes. - M .: Alexander Me Foundation, 2002.
- Bible translations into oriental languages // Men A.V. Bibliological Dictionary: in 3 volumes. - M .: Alexander Me Foundation, 2002.
- Bible Translation in Church Slavonic
- Bible translation in Church Slavonic in Russian transliteration
- History of the Synodal Bible Translation
- Bible. Publications and translations - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
- Bible. Translations // Orthodox Encyclopedia