Eugene Nida

In 1937, Nida undertook studies at the

In 1943, Nida received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Michigan. He was ordained as a Baptist minister. He married Althea Lucille Sprague in 1943 and settled in Greenwich, Connecticut. Althea Sprague died in 1993. In 1997, he married María Elena Fernandez-Miranda, a lawyer and diplomatic attache.

Nida retired in the early 1980s, although he continued to give lectures in universities all around the world, and lived in Alpine, Arizona, USA; Madrid, Spain and Brussels, Belgium.^[6] He died in Madrid on August 25, 2011, aged 96.^[2]

Career

In 1943, Nida began his career as a

Nida was instrumental in engineering the joint effort between the Vatican and the United Bible Societies (UBS) to produce cross-denominational Bibles in translations across the globe. This work began in 1968 and was carried on in accordance with Nida's translation principle of Functional Equivalence.

Nida received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1974.^[7]

Theories

Nida has been a pioneer in the fields of translation theory and linguistics.

His Ph.D. dissertation, A Synopsis of English Syntax, was the first full-scale analysis of a major language according to the "immediate-constituent" theory. His textbook Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words was one of the major works of American

His most notable contribution to translation theory is Dynamic Equivalence, also known as Functional Equivalence. For more information, see "

Nida's dynamic-equivalence theory is often held in opposition to the views of

This theory, along with other theories of correspondence in translating, are elaborated in his essay Principles of Correspondence,^[8] where Nida begins by asserting that given that "no two languages are identical, either in the meanings given to corresponding symbols or in the ways in which symbols are arranged in phrases and sentences, it stands to reason that there can be no absolute correspondence between languages. Hence, there can be no fully exact translations."^[9] While the impact of a translation may be close to the original, there can be no identity in detail.

Nida then sets forth three factors that must be taken into account in translating:

1. The nature of the message: in some messages the content is of primary consideration, and in others the form must be given a higher priority.
2. The purpose of the author and of the translator: to give information on both form and content; to aim at full intelligibility of the reader so he/she may understand the full implications of the message; for imperative purposes that aim at not just understanding the translation but also at ensuring no misunderstanding of the translation.
3. The type of audience: prospective audiences differ both in decoding ability and in potential interest.

While reminding that while there are no such things as "identical equivalents" in translating, Nida asserts that a translator must find the "closest natural equivalent." Here he distinguishes between two approaches to the translation task and types of translation: Formal Equivalence (F-E) and Dynamic Equivalence (D-E).

F-E focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. Such translations then would be concerned with such correspondences as poetry to poetry, sentence to sentence, and concept to concept. Such a formal orientation that typifies this type of structural equivalence is called a "gloss translation" in which the translator aims at reproducing as literally and meaningfully as possible the form and content of the original.

The principles governing an F-E translation would then be: reproduction of grammatical units; consistency in word usage; and meanings in terms of the source

D-E on the other hand aims at complete "naturalness" of expression. A D-E translation is directed primarily towards equivalence of response rather than equivalence of form. The relationship between the target language receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original (source language) receptors and the message.

The principles governing a D-E translation then would be:

Nida and

Works

Published Works include the following:

• Linguistic Interludes - (Glendale, CA: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1944 (Revised 1947))
• The Bible Translator - (Journal founded and edited by Dr. Nida (retired), 1949- )
• Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words - (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2nd ed. 1949)
• Message and Mission - (Harper, 1960)
• Customs, Culture and Christianity - (Tyndale Press, 1963)
• Toward a Science of Translating - (Brill, 1964)
• Religion Across Cultures - (Harper, 1968)
• The Theory and Practice of Translation - (Brill, 1969, with C.R. Taber)
• A Componential Analysis of Meaning – (De Gruyter; Approaches to Semiotics col. 57)
• Understanding Latin Americans: With Special Reference to Religious Values and Movements - (William Carey Library, 1974)
• Language Structure and Translation: Essays - (Stanford University Press, 1975)
• From One Language to Another - (Nelson, 1986, with Jan de Waard)
• The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains - (UBS, 1988, with Louw)
• Contexts in Translating - (John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 2002)
• Fascinated by Languages - (John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 2003)

See also

• Translation
• Hebrew Old Testament Text Project

Notes

References

• Felber, Stefan. Kommunikative Bibelübersetzung. Eugene A. Nida und sein Modell der dynamischen Äquivalenz, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2013, 2nd edition 2016, 481 pp. (contains comprehensive bibliography of Nida).
• Ma, H. J. 2003. A study of Nida’s translation theory. Beijing: Teaching and Research Press.
• Stine, Philip. 2005. Let the Words Be Written: The Lasting Influence of Eugene A. Nida. Brill Academic Publishers.
• Stine, Philip. 2004. Eugene A. Nida: A Historical and Contemporary Assessment. The Bible Translator 55.4:469-479.
• George, Calvin. The History of the Reina-Valera 1960 Spanish Bible, Morris Publishing, 2004. (Contains a lengthy chapter about Nida's life and religious beliefs) Still in print and available through https://web.archive.org/web/20080411033537/http://en.literaturabautista.com/node/22
• Nida, Elena. Gene Nida: My Husband and my inspiration, Xulon Press, 2014.
• Nida, Eugene. “Principles of Correspondence”. The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2004.
• Nida, Eugene (1995). "Principi di traduzione esemplificati dalla traduzione della Bibbia". In Nergaard, Siri (ed.). Teorie contemporanee della traduzione. Milan: Bompiani. pp. 149–180.
• Watt, Johnathan. 2005. The contributions of Eugene A. Nida to sociolinguistics. The Bible Translator 56.1:19-28.

External links

• The Eugene A. Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship
• The American Bible Society
• The United Bible Societies
• A review of the book: Nida, Eugene A. (2003) Fascinated by Languages
• Eugene Nida's obituary Archived 2011-09-29 at the Wayback Machine