Digging Deeper - Translation vs. Transliteration

Despite what many of us would like to believe, the Bible was not written in the contemporary English of the New International Version. There is much that is different from the times and cultures in which the Bible was written as compared to our time and culture. We must understand how the Word of God, which was written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, came to us who speak 21st Century English.

The Bibles that we read today use two methods of bringing the Word out of the original languages to our contemporary English. The first method is translation, which conveys the content of one language into another using word-for-word, phrase-for-phrase, or thought-for-thought replacement. The following is an example of translation: There is a song sung in both Spanish and English called “La Via Dolorosa.” One line of this song says, “Down the ‘Via Dolorosa,’ the way of suffering.” In this one line, the songwriter translates “via” (way) and “dolorosa” (painful) directly into a phrase that makes sense in English, i.e. “the way of suffering.” In the same way, the scholars who have given us the modern English Bible have analyzed the original languages and rendered them in a way that makes sense to us.

The other technique is transliteration, which is the taking of a word from foreign language and rendering it without translating it. For an example lets look at the words: “Caesar” and “Czar.” “Caesar” was the name of the first Roman emperor (Julius Caesar) and later became the name of the office of all the emperors who followed him. This word was adapted through transliteration many centuries ago in the Russian language to “царь” which was the office of the royal head of state in Russia. In English, we would typically look at a word like “царь” and simply translate it to “king.” However, in order to denote the national origin of the Russian king and the cultural meaning associated with it, we have transliterated this word in English to “czar.”

For our purposes, in the New Testament, let’s focus on 3 particular words that are transliterated from Greek to English: “apostle” (from the Greek “απόστολος”), “baptism” (from the Greek “βάπτισμα”) , and “Christ” (from the Greek “Χριστός”).

Just as the term “czar” has limited use and meaning outside of Russian history, the words “apostle,” “baptism,” and “Christ” are rarely, if ever, used outside of religious context. In fact would we even understand what these words actually mean outside church? For example, we know that there were 12 apostles of Christ, but what exactly is an apostle? If we were to translate this word into English, it would simply be “messenger.” With this knowledge, we have a better understanding of what the Bible truly means in Luke 6:13: “…he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles”. Here Jesus called his followers to him and designated 12 of them to be His special “messengers”. When we look at the transliterated word “apostle” we may get the sense that Jesus was mystically transforming these men into “super-disciples.” The meaning of the word “apostle” translated rather than transliterated is similar to a coach calling a team together and appointing some members of the team as captains. The 12 apostles were the first spiritual captains of the original church!

“Baptism” is another term that is used frequently but understood incompletely. Again, without translating “baptism” from Greek to English, we might consider the act of baptism as an almost ethereal event in which a person is magically transformed from a sinner to a saint. However, let’s translate “baptism” from Greek: when doing so, “baptism” is “immersion.” Now let’s apply the translation to the following command from Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Dunking someone in the water, even in the name of Jesus, does not necessarily immerse that person in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! When translated, “baptism” describes not only the act of water immersion but the immersion of one’s life in God. If Christians today were to convey the translated meaning of baptism to their non-Christians friends, perhaps we would see many more sincere conversions to Christ.

The last of the transliterated words in this study is surely the most important: “Christ.” Some people may erroneously think that “Christ” was Jesus’ last name, but with a little attention to detail we understand that this was the authoritative title conferred upon him by God. The term Christ, “Χριστός” in Greek, was actually a Hebrew to Greek translation of a Hebrew word which we know in English as “messiah.” This term means “anointed one.” Since there isn’t much anointing going on these days, we lose even more meaning when we only transliterate “Christ” and don’t translate it. For the purpose of this study, let’s recognize that to “anoint” means to confer authority upon someone. To fully understand it, we might make the analogy that every four years in America we vote for President and the winner is the “anointed” leader of our nation. Now consider the following Scripture from Matthew 16:16 with “Christ” translated rather than transliterated: “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the anointed one, the Son of the living God.’" Peter recognized that Jesus was the anointed one, the chosen one, the one upon whom God had conferred his authority. The term “Christ” had tangible meaning to Peter in that Jesus demonstrated the teaching, actions and lifestyle of one chosen by God to lead people to salvation.

In summary, it will be of great value to us to understand the words used in our Bible to ensure that we fully grasp the content and context. Hopefully, the next time you run across a transliterated word in your Bible you will be inspired to dig deeper in order to translate it in a meaningful way!