Function + Loyalty: Theology Meets Skopos

• Authors: Christiane Nord
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Bible translation is traditionally in the hands of theologians, whose focus is on the meaning of the source text rather than on what modern readers are able to understand. This paper attempts to show where translation theory, or more specifically, the Skopos theory of translation, may help Bible translators to produce texts that “work” or “function” for the intended audience without betraying their trust that they are reading God’s word in their own language. After a brief overview of the development of Translation Studies, we shall take a quick look at some guiding principles of Bible translation, as explained in prefaces of modern versions, before presenting the main ideas of Skopos theory and illustrating them by a few examples from the New Testament. The conclusion will sum up the fundamental hypotheses of the skopos-theoretical concept “Function + Loyalty.”

Keywords

EN

Purpose; functionalism; loyalty; translation brief; audience orientation

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Open Theology
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 1

Dates

received

2016-03-19

accepted

2016-04-21

online

2016-06-10

Contributors

author

Christiane Nord

• University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/opth-2016-0045