Towards a Model for “Loyal Bible Translation”: Maintaining Quality Despite Competing Concerns

Loyalty as a concept in Bible translation is best known through the writings of the German translation scholar Christiane Nord. Nord’s version of functionalist, Skopos theory-oriented translation added loyalty to resist the possibility of radical translations that diminish or even “dethrone” the place of the source text. However, despite the addition of the loyalty concept, some scholars and Bible translation practitioners continue to criticise Skopos theory. This paper utilises the Hebrew term ḥesed to further define loyalty for Bible translation. Like the term loyalty in Nord’s writings, ḥesed is a relational concept and strengthens the notion of loyalty as a bilateral commitment to both the source text author and target audience. By defining ḥesed as a key to loyalty in Bible translation, this paper describes a model for “Loyal Bible Translation”. Loyal Bible Translation results in a quality translation product for a target audience from a source text without forsaking the main translation principles of Accuracy, Clarity, Naturalness, and Acceptability/Appropriateness. This paper also presents insights from a Bible translation project in a Mozambican minority language to show that successful Loyal Bible Translation is possible.