The style of Bible translation

I want to piggyback off Steve's post "The art of Bible translation":

1. To my knowledge, Bible translators attempt to balance accuracy, clarity, and naturalness in translation. I've sometimes seen other elements, but these seem to be the main ones. However, I don't know where things like style, tone, or voice would slot under. Perhaps naturalness?

2. In any case, I would think the main aim of a translation into its receptor language would be to reflect the fullness of the original as much as possible. For instance, if a text is elegant, then its translation should be elegant too. If a text is vulgar, then its translation should be vulgar too. All things equal, this seems to better reflect the original than (say) slavishly translating word-for-word, then flattening the entire translation into a uniform style.

3. On this note, I think one problem with Bible translators is that they may be fine biblical scholars, but (forgive me) usually they're not very literary or poetic. I'm sure there are exceptions.

4. Of course, the Bible translation committee or team could bring in a stylist(s). However, at least to my knowledge, it seems the stylist is typically brought in after the fact. That is, after the biblical scholars have translated a book of the Bible, it's the stylist's turn to make it sound stylish in the receptor language. Maybe I'm mistaken and it doesn't work like this. However, if it does work like this, then I don't know if that's necessarily the best approach.

5. In addition, not all stylists necessarily have a style that fits every book of the Bible. One person's style may be better suited for some books of the Bible than others. For instance, I imagine Cormac McCarthy's brutal, spare style might be suited to the book of Judges, and even certain parts of Revelation, but his style might be ill-suited for Rev 21. By contrast, C. S. Lewis might be able to do justice to a translation of Rev 21, judging by the sublime passages in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Perelandra. (It might be fun to try to match various styles of past or present literary figures with various passages or books of the Bible to see who might be the best stylist for a given biblical text.)

6. If the scholar and stylist can't be the same person, then I would think it might be better to have the scholar and stylist work together on the translation. The one informs the other as both translate the text. Maybe that's already how it works in Bible translation efforts.

7. As I'm sure all good translators know (and far better than I do), translation shouldn't be strictly about translating words, but translation should also be about finding the right tone or voice for the work that's being translated. Moreover, it's about grasping the mood or atmosphere in the original work and evoking it in translation. In other words, unless we're translating something mundane like a shopping list or how-to manual, there's typically something above and beyond the words themselves that likewise needs to be "translated" as well. That strikes me as more difficult to capture well than (say) syntax. One needs an ear attuned to hear the music, as it were, then the skill to render it into song.

8. Consider translations of Dante's Divine Comedy. How best to translate Dante? Free verse, blank verse, terza rima, iambic pentameter? A mixture? Perhaps even (gasp!) prose?

John Ciardi's translation has been called the poet's Dante. Ciardi often sings in a way other translations don't. One sometimes even has a better sense of Dante's voice in Ciardi than in other translations. However, many scholars don't like Ciardi because he takes too much license in translation whereas scholars want to see more fidelity to the original text. Ciardi isn't always accurate to Dante's Italian. As such, scholars might prefer Allen Mandelbaum or Robert & Jean Hollander despite the fact that the latter two come across a bit more stiff or wooden and stilted at times.

In this respect, Ciardi is not unlike Seamus Heaney's beautiful translation of Beowulf which many scholars nevertheless sniff at and deride as "Heaneywulf" since the poet's mark is so distinctly stamped on the translation. Perhaps they would say Heaneywulf threatens to drown out Beowulf. Yet Heaney captures something significant that more formal translations fail to do, even as it lacks other qualities. So there's a tradeoff.

9. Thankfully, as Steve points out in his post, we don't have to choose between Bible translations. The English language has been blessed with scores of translations. What's more, people who can read other languages might do well to consult Bible translations in other languages (e.g. Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese).

With this in mind, I think there are at least four different types of translations: interlinear, formal, functional, and paraphrase. It might do well to have a different English translation in each of these categories, depending on one's goals (e.g. Bible study, devotional reading, public reading).