In a class called Semantics and Translation, I caught a glimpse of one of the ministries that I would love to be involved with and am eagerly anticipating.
In this class we worked in small groups to go through the process of determining the intended meaning of every phrase in Mark 2:1-12 and came up with a point-by-point list of propositions covering every detail of the passage, using the NASB as the source text. As a group we decided to direct our translation toward third graders, so of course we had to decide how to deal with difficult words and concepts like paralytic, faith, blasphemy, and the rhetorical questions.
In order to ensure accuracy, another huge aspect of translation is to put the written translation through a number of checks including grammatical precision, theological accuracy, and cultural comprehension. Here I’ve posted our final translation of this passage for another check from you.
At the end I’ve included our reasons for translating some things the way we did, but no peeking! Send me your comments or at least write them down before you read our reasons. So read Mark 2:1-12 in your Bible, then read our translation, remember that our target audience is third graders, and send us any comments you have about it!
Mark 2:1-12
1: Several days after that, Jesus came back to the city of Capernaum. People heard that He was at home.
2: Many people came to the house where Jesus was. The house was so full of people that there was not even room to stand by the door! Jesus was teaching the Word of God to them.
3: Some people came to the house, trying to bring to Jesus a crippled man that could not walk. Four men were carrying him.
4: They could not get to Jesus because there were so many people in the way. So they went up onto the roof and made a hole. When the hole was finished, they lowered the man down on his sleeping mat to Jesus.
5: When Jesus saw that they believed that He could heal him, Jesus said to the man who could not walk, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”
6: But some of the Jewish teachers were sitting there thinking,
7: “It is wrong for Jesus to say that. What He is saying is really evil because only God can forgive sins.”
8: Right away Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the Jewish teachers, “You should not be thinking that way.
9: There are a couple things that someone could have said to the crippled man. Anyone could have said, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ but it would have been hard to say, ‘Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk.’
10: “But now I will prove to you teachers that I, the Son of Man, have the power to forgive sins.” Then Jesus said to the crippled man,
11: “I am telling you, ‘Stand up, pick up your sleeping mat and walk.’”
12: And the man stood up! Right away he picked up his sleeping mat and walked out of the house! Everyone saw him, and they were all very amazed. They praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this before.”
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Below are our reasons for translating some of the things the way we did. Send us your comments before you read them if you’d like.
Capernaum we translated as city of Capernaum because we wanted to make sure that our younger target audience understands what it is. City of does not add to the meaning, it simply clarifies it.
There are a few options for how to translate the word that Jesus was teaching them in verse 2. We felt that this was referring to more than just the words that Jesus was saying, but that it was referring to the Old Testament. However, using Old Testament or the law and prophets didn’t sound right, especially for this age group. The Word of God seems to clarify this without adding to the meaning.
I’m actually not sure why any modern translation chooses to use the term pallet for the object on which the man was carried, because of the images that it raises in my mind. We thought about a few different options and decided on sleeping mat because we thought that it was accurate and that it would be well understood by our audience.
As for the paralytic, at first we had translated it as the man that could not walk. I’m sure you could imagine that that quickly became a mouthful to say and was just really confusing in some instances. So we started brainstorming for something easier to say. We thought about how Jesus’ cousin was introduced in chapter 1 as John the Baptist, then later he was simply referred to as John. So we decided to call the paralytic the crippled man that could not walk the first time he was introduced and then just refer to him as the crippled man from then on.
Now we come to a couple terms that carry a little more theological implications than the ones already mentioned. The first being that we translated Jesus seeing their faith as When Jesus saw that the people believed that He could heal him in verse 5. First of all, we changed the noun faith to the verb believe. Then, we thought it might be confusing to a third grader what these people were believing, but we also thought that it was obvious to us from the context. At this point, they were not believing that Jesus would forgive the man of his sins. They were believing that He would heal the man, so we translated it accordingly for our third grade audience.
Another theological term here that would be hard to understand is blasphemy in verse 7, which we translated as really evil. Blasphemy would be difficult for third graders to understand. In this context, it seems to be talking about Jesus claiming to be God, but it also seems to carry the meaning of speaking evil, so we decided to keep it general. Blasphemy is also a very strong term, so we decided to go with really evil.
The final thing that I wanted to remark on was how we dealt with verses 8-10. We spent quite some time deliberating about these verses. For one thing, we realized that our audience would probably not understand rhetorical questions, so we removed them completely. But, so as not to just do a blanket removal and rewording, we were very diligent about determining the exact intended meaning behind each rhetorical question and translating it accordingly. Basically, a rhetorical question is one that’s intended meaning is not to elicit an answer; a rhetorical question is meant to either make a statement or an exhortation.
The term to say in verse 9 doesn’t seem that significant; however, looking it up in the Greek helped us determine that it really did only mean to say and does not contain any meaning referring to do or accomplish. We also found that it is always the definite past tense. Both of these facts helped us to conclude that Jesus was saying “It was easy to say ‘your sins are forgiven,’ but it would have been harder to say ‘stand up, pick up your mat, and walk.’” The second really is harder to say because it requires proof. Since Jesus is God, and both of these things are actually equally easy for Him to say and to accomplish, He is obviously speaking to them from a human standpoint. This is maintained by Him speaking in general terms: “Anyone could have said…but it would have been hard to say…”
So there you have our translation and our reasons for translating some things the way we did. Please let us know what you think.
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Bryson and Mindy White Enroute to Paraguay 
