| I begin by importing a chapter of the Latin text into my WordPerfect program. I format the verses of the Latin so they are three lines apart. I translate each verse with the following objectives: 1. To begin with, I translate each word of Latin into English. Sometimes, the different linguistic structures make this problematic. In the interest of clarity, I will (rarely) leave a word out that is in the original. More often, I will add words in English to make the original meaning clearer. When I add a word in the English, I italicize it so the reader will have a better sense of the original. 2. I then correct the translations, using the 1899 American edition of Douay-Rheims as the master text. I then read, re- read, and re-read, over a course of months, until the work is published. 3. Where there are difficult passages, I lay the Latin, Greek, King James, and Hebrew side-by-side for comparison. 4. When the translation is unclear, I will add the King James reading as a footnote, to let the reader compare. My goal is not just to translate the Latin Bible. It is to craft a translation that, while based on the Latin, is faithful to all the ancient versions and is refined in reference to modern ones. I want the documents that result to be clear, accurate, and faithful to the originals. I do this partly out of pride, since I take my own scholarship seriously. More than that, I do this because I am in love with God’s Word and want more than anything else that others find in it the same meaning and power I do. I often hear variations of the following questions, “Why are you wasting your time translating from Latin? Don’t you know the books you’re translating were first written in Hebrew and Greek?” When the questioners establish that, yes, I am aware of the original languages, they usually follow up by saying, “Don’t you know that the Latin version is full of Catholic bias? Don’t you know that the Latin is riddled with errors?” Here are a few answers. First of all, I have a bias in favor of real things. The oldest extant Bible is in Latin, some three centuries older than the oldest formerly extant Hebrew text. Secondly, having placed the originals and the Latin side-by- side, I haven’t found the many errors alleged to be in the Latin, or the supposed Catholic bias. I’m thinking a lot of the hostility toward the Latin is residue from the Reformation, which, we do well to note, occurred eleven hundred years after the Latin text was constructed. Third, the continuity of the whole Bible is much more in evidence in the Latin than in our contemporary English versions. The best example of this is the word “Christ,” which makes its first appearance in the KJV and its successors in Matthew. Since we English-speakers have a Jewish Old Testament cobbled onto a Protestant New Testament, we lose sight of the unity that earlier centuries saw in scripture. Fourth, the Latin text stood at the apex of seven centuries of ancient biblical scholarship in many languages. Jerome had access to materials long since lost to even the best scholars. I’ ve come to greatly respect his thoroughness, fairness, and style. Fifth, as I’ve said often, the marvelous simplicity of the Latin language is in full force in the Vulgate, making it an almost sublimely clear and lucid text. My hope is to create an English text that comes close to the primordial simplicity and clarity of the original. This text will be able to stand on its own, as one’s own Bible, or will be an enrichment to other versions, according to the tastes of the reader. ©2010, John G. Cunyus All Rights Reserved to Images, Commentary, and Translation reserved. www.JohnCunyus.com. |
| My Method of Bible Translation by John Cunyus |
