As a less dominant tongue, French was rarely the source of translations but rather the object. In the Canadian situation, for example, it was easy to see that the Federal model of equal, symmetrical facing-page translations did not carry over to the society as a whole. The lessons of Bible translation were readily transferrable to other contexts. This was clear from the reaction of the Ecuadorian government when it expelled the SIL in 1981. This was by no means an activity devoid of social and political implications. But by declaring “dynamic equivalence” superior to “formal equivalence”, by privileging the message over the letter, he was promoting the kind of translation that served his interests and those of his community-translation in the service of conversion. Nida was a great scholar and an effective pedagogue. And that theory does not always declare its motivations. I learned that translations can be partisan. The value of the article to me, however, was immense.
Though I thought my article might stir up more negative reactions (I thought it was a devastating critique but now realize it was quite tame, and actually quite derivative, in relation to Meschonnic’s severe and ongoing condemnation), the article had little response. He didn’t quite understand my alarm, but he was sympathetic to my defense of the article and published it. What did I think? I was in Clas’ office minutes after receiving his message. Just before publication I received a message from the editor of the journal, André Clas, informing me of a negative critique by a European Bible scholar. My article “Délivrer la Bible: la théorie d’Eugène Nida” was accepted by Meta ( TTR was not born yet).
This version can only be valid for an approach to translation which reduces the Bible to an easily assimilated message. The Good News Bible, associated with Nida’s American Bible Society, goes in the other direction and interprets the phrase to mean: “It is useless”. Meschonnic’s French translation (1970) stays very close to the original idea of mist with “buée des buées”. For instance, the verse from Ecclesiastes familiar to readers of the King James Bible as “vanity of vanities” comes from the Hebrew “havel havalim”, meaning “breath of breaths” or “mist of mists”. By seeking the spirit rather than the letter, Nida’s views clashed with those of two brilliant French thinkers-Antoine Berman and Henri Meschonnic-more closely associated with a Jewish tradition emphasizing the importance of the letter. How could a missionary, a man for whom translation had a very pragmatic and specific goal, formulate principles that would be valid outside of this sphere? My first publication in Translation Studies (Simon, 1987) explored this question, and suggested that Nida’s scientific approach was identifiably Christian, taking for granted the idea that the message of any text was to be wrested away from its form.
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