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Part of
Key Cultural Texts in Translation
Edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, Adriana Şerban and Fransiska Louwagie
[Benjamins Translation Library 140] 2018
► pp. 299–313

Chapter 17
Alterity, orality and performance in Bible translation

The Bible contains numerous features of alterity (aspects which reflect its “otherness” to modern readers) which are compounded by its cultural and generic diversity. Here, we examine alterity in Bible translation through the lens of Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of the Other, which he viewed as an equal rather than an inferior, and his insistence that oral, face-to-face encounters with the other are primary. Performance translation recreates the oral nature of the biblical text, providing a means both to encounter the alterity of the Bible in a meaningful way and to convey it to contemporary audiences. We use a liturgical psalm and a proverbial saying to illustrate the potential of performance translation in conveying the alterity of the Bible in translation.
Keywords: alterity, orality, performance translation, Bible translation, liturgical poem, Psalm 24, proverb, poetic parallelism, otherness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Alterity, performance and Bible translation
    • 1.2Levinas on alterity and oral performance
  • 2.Psalm 24 as the performance of alterity
  • 3.Proverbs and the performance of wisdom
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.140.17nau
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