Knocked up?

The various strands of discussion about translational equivalence going on here and at Aristotle’s Feminist Subject are too juicy to leave in the limbo of comments. A couple days back, J. K. Gayle threw down the gauntlet in the debate about translational quality — at least that’s how some of us took it — by giving a long list of high quality translations of the preamble to the American Declaration of Independence. Several of them are in pairs in the same language and show different wordings.

There seems to be an assumption that Wayne and I believe that there is some idealized meaning out there and when we read the original we can tell what that is and can measure exactly how close a translation comes, and by extension that there is only one. The problem is that we, or at least I, don’t think that there is an idealized meaning. J. K. Gayle and I have been going round and round on this one. I say I can tell what the original means and I maintain that in the vast majority of cases the meaning is unique and neither vague nor ambiguous. He goes post-modern on me and challenges that. Because people are involved, he reasons, there can’t be just one meaning, and if I think there is then I must be a Platonist.

Not quite.

You see, I believe that meanings are socially constructed. The word dog refers to a category of animals by social convention. The category referred to by the Spanish word perro largely overlaps with that category. But in each language that meaning is socially constructed. The speakers of the respective languages “agree” to both the category and the word that labels it.

Yes, Virginia, there are natural kinds. But they aren’t Aristotle’s. Every language/society builds its own set. What makes translation possible is that the translator can cobble together categories (actually subcategories) in each language in such a way as to effect the communication of the same meaning — in context.

Furthermore, the fact that meanings are socially constructed has the effect that the vast, vast majority of language use in context is simultaneously precise and imprecise. Precise for its communicative end, but imprecise in that particular communicative ends do not completely determine the wordings.

Let me show you.

Situation: teen-aged daughter at home, mother at the store, father walks in the door.

Father: Hi, where’s your mother?
Daughter: She went to the store.

or

Father: Hi, where’s your mother?
Daughter: She went shopping.

or

Father: Hi, where’s your mother?
Daughter: She’s at the store.

or

Father: Hi, where’s your mother?
Daughter: She’s out shopping.

All the daughter’s answers are fine. At some important level they all mean the same thing. That is to say, they answer the father’s question in a culturally appropriate way. I have been, for some time, arguing that words are just the tools we use for passing meanings back and forth. This is a clear example.

But, the literalist will say, in the four different scenarios the daughter said four different things.

True, but irrelevant.

The fact is that for the purposes of the communication all the relevant information is conveyed by any of the four wordings — in context. To be more precise than is necessary goes beyond the demands of the cultural situation — and that would have its own meaning.

Father: Hi, where’s your mother?
Daughter: She left at 4:36 to go to Safeway and, since it’s now 5:12, she’s probably putting the groceries in the trunk.

TMI.

This combination of precision and imprecision is why there can be several high quality translations of the same text.

If we look at how people actually use language we’ll discover two things:

1) People are only as precise as they need to be.
2) They make efficient use of their linguistic materials to convey those things they want to convey.

Same scenario:

Father: Hi, where’s your mother?
Daughter: Out.

What’s up here? Well, the daughter is meeting the letter of the law by answering the question, but she’s conveying annoyance by not fully cooperating. This means something different from the wordings above, and it’s not just that the reference is different.

This is pragmatics — the study of how language is used, and the single piece most left out of Bible translation.

So let’s apply pragmatics to the pregnancy problem in Matt. 1:18 that Wayne was talking about a couple of days ago. How many ways are there in English to convey the meaning that a woman is pregnant?

Dozens.

She’s pregnant.
She’s expecting.
She’s going to have a baby.
She’s in a family way.
She is with child. (I find it odd to say: She’s with child.)
She’s gravid.
She’s got a bun in the oven.
She’s knocked up.

and so on.

In one way these all mean the same thing. But only doctors in a medical context will say She’s gravid. (Imagine a doctor announcing his wife’s new condition to his parents: Debbie’s gravid.) If you say She is with child., it’s half joking. Saying She’s pregnant. can be a little blunt. She’s expecting. is nicer. So is She’s going to have a baby. You hear all three of these a lot, especially if you’re in a church with a high percentage of young marrieds. And knocked up has a quite rich frame that comes with it. The prototype is that it’s out of wedlock, accidental (as opposed to saying She’s carrying his love child.), and the father doesn’t want to take any responsibility.

Look this topic up in Perseus and you’ll find that there are some 39 ways in Greek to say pregnant or conceive. However, unlike English, one of the ways of referring to pregnancy is used more than all the other ways combined, ἔχει (ἐν γαστρί) ‘She has (in the belly)’. No other way comes close. So the question is: if Matt. 1:18 is normative Greek usage, what’s the appropriate English translation?

Answer: if you think Matthew is writing plain Greek (and I’d argue he is), then it should be plain in English. Mary’s family and Joseph thought Mary was knocked up, but Matthew is giving a more informed view:

This is how Jesus, the Messiah, came to be born: His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph, but before they had slept together, it was discovered that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 1:18)