On Title-pages, Tables of Contents, Paging, &c., with a few words on Proof-reading .

10

SUGGESTIONS FOR TRANSLATORS,

translated ; the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could after. the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation.'

This was an admirable course to pursue, especially in the matter of translating ' as clearly as he could after the sense.' For this is always to be the translator's aim-to give the sense of Scripture. For doing this he will find it impossible to render word for word, or idiom for idiom, or even to retain the same order of words, unless he is tr:rnslating into a strictly cognate idiom. In some of the Turanian languages he will find it hard even to keep to the order of verses in the more elaborate of St. Paul's arguments, and he may have to throw two or three verses together; but this plan had better not be resorted to if any other expedient can be devised.

The Scylla and Charybdis between which the translator has to steer are the danger of sacrificing the sense by being too literal, and that of losing the force of the original words by being too idiomatic. It is certainly a good rule of Jerome's ' magis sensum e sensu q_uam ex verbo verbu,m transferre' (Pref. Judith), or as Purvey puts it, 'to translate after the sense, and not only after the words.' But, as Jerome says in another place, 'Melius est in divinis libris transferre q_uod dictum est licet non intelligas q_uare dictum sit, quam auferre quod nescias' (Com. in Ezek. xx.). If a translator is doubtful whether a certain expression is to be rendered literally or to be regarded as an idiom, it is best to put the literal rendering in the text and the idiomatic in the margin, or vice versa, according as his mind most inclines one way or the other. The context is a great help in most cases ; as Purvey says again, ' a translator hath great need to study well the sense before and after.' After all, it is no easy thing to distinguish the idiomatic from the literal in such a pictorial language as the Hebrew. How our English translators have acted under the circumstances will be seen further on.

It ought to be mentioned in so many words, though already implied in the earlier part of this section, that the British and Foreign Bible Society has never considered the English version a fixed standard in all matters of translation. It is only regarded as a generally safe guide, a type of what a version ought to be in style, idiom, and learning. Its renderings are not infallible, but they ought not lightly to be set aside.

A translator ought to avoid fanciful renderings, and to have a very considerable respect for those which have come down from early times. A man must not introduce his ' hobbies ' into a version of God's Word. All translations made by single individuals contain them, it is to be feared, but they should be resolutely reduced to a minimu,m. There is a strong tendency,