Sansblogue

For the post related to the image below see Reading Digitally

Screenshot from iPad Alice video

JPS has a post, Computers, you, and books that after rehearsing some of the common (and justified) concerns of modern-day Socrates that we use electronic texts so much that our attention span is withering. [For Socrates bemouning the terrors of writing it was memory that was in danger.] He quotes from the Chicago Tribune:

A friend of mine in her early 20s managed to poke a finger through the tissue-thin argument that iPads, Kindles and Nooks are just as good as books, that reading is reading, that content is all that matters.

She and her classmates at the University of Notre Dame were invited to the home of a revered professor. It was a gleaming palace of erudition, she said: Room after room was filled with elegant floor-to-ceiling bookcases; each bookcase was filled with beautiful volumes; each volume seemed to glow with the written legacy of the world’s wisdom.

It was, she recalled, breathtaking.

Alphabet book by Muffet

Here, lightly edited are my comments:

I’ve loved books, all sorts and conditions of book, for at least sixty years now. But, there are increasingly few books I am willing to fetishise. Some because this particular tome has memories, like the copy of Just So Stories my father read to me, some because the physical production is just so beautiful… but such volumes are rare, and becoming less commonly available and at a higher relative price. I notice that even renowned bibliophile Jim West hesitates before the cost of Brill’s handsome volumes…

Esther scroll from a Sephardic Synagogue (Wikipedia)

The issue, as always, seems to me to be not the format of books, but the forming of readers. That requires not the rants of creaky old curmudgeons, but the time and energy of influential parents and grandparents (or those temporarily, perhaps, in loco).
Now I do not mean that either JPS or others of you who bemoan the (not yet accomplished, indeed looking likely to survive with far more life than the scroll has done) death of the codex are  curmudgeons, but I do think you may resemble the King Canute of fame and fable ;)

The real job is reading to small children who then learn to want to read, whether on Kindle or spindle matters much less than the simple desire!

The Shallows

Nicholas Carr. W. W. Norton & Company 2010, Hardcover, 276 pages, $15.74

You’ll see the point of my title if you read John Dyer’s fine and thought provoking post Are Chapter and Verse Numbers Making Us Stupid? John begins from Nicholas Carr’s provocative discussion of hypertext and what links do to our reading: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (at least the leaks and hints have been provoked much discussion already ;)

Then he asks the really interesting follow-up question, if hyperlinks and other interruptions in the flow of text make processing more difficult what about all the extra divisions in our Bibles? He discusses particularly chapters and verses, but the conversation in the comments begins to go wider. So in this context I’ll repost here a post from my old Blogger blog:

What should a Bible Translation look like?

Page from La Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible

First was David’s mild-mannered complaint about the “Section Headings” that translators, or their publishers, add on to the Bible text, sometimes misinterpreting the meaning; then my response and Henry Neufeld‘s post basically agreed, but perhaps expressed more stronhgly revulsion for section headings as possibly misleading additions to the text of Scripture (some of the comments to David’s post were in the same tone). For a more thorough and balanced account of this iniquitously arrogant practice see David’s second post Dissection Headings and especially the comments there.

Then Wayne asked about translation gaps meaning places where a straightforward (rather than lengthily explanatory) translation leaves a naive reader lost to much of the meaning. He gives as example Romans 11:16:
Here is how the passage reads in the TEV (Good News Translation) which our children grew up on:

If the first piece of bread is given to God, then the whole loaf is his also; and if the roots of a tree are offered to God, the branches are his also.

The TEV is one of the most idiomatic translations ever produced in English. Its English is natural. Yet someone without background knowledge of Jewish religious customs would not understand Rom. 11:16 in the TEV or any other translation, for that matter. And we really can’t make an encyclopedia out of our translations, filling in all such large translation gaps.

In the comments there I suggested that this was where a good (simple) set of cross references that points to possible allusions to other passages of the canon, or references to practices etc. was an essential part of a good Bible translation.

So… all this got me wondering, what should be included in a good simple Bible translation for beginners, and what is unwarranted tinkering with the sacred words of Scripture?

Here is my first attempt to think through the question:

Organising the Text
Section headings were added so as to break up the text, make the Bible seem more like other books, and make it easier for users to find things – though as David points out headings in the header at the top of the page would achieve this.

Paragraphing (rather than the older practice of printing each verse as a separate paragraph) was also begun to make the Bible “look like” other books none of which (except poetry which is broken into lines) are printed as a series of consecutive “verses”.

What makes paragraphs acceptable and headings anathema?

Firstly, almost all “normal” books in our culture have the prose printed in paragraphs, but section headings are optional. Second, although bad paragraphing misleads a reader, it misleads them much less than a badly placed or worded section heading. (That’s why I am glad to see the layout of many modern Bibles indicate when the old [but not "biblical"] chapter breaks fall in the “wrong” place.) So, paragraphs do more good and less harm. Indeed they are part of the translation process for printed books in our culture are not merely worded in English, they have paragraphs for prose and lines for poetry. Thus in translating ancient Hebrew or Greek into modern English this adaptation of form is legitimate.

Chapters and verses are a similar case. They too are added to the Bible and NOT part of the text. Yet, they are very convenient, how else – if we wanted to check the cotext – would we know which precise part of Romans Wayne meant (above) unless we knew the whole book nearly by heart? But, since they are additions added to the text, make the indications small and as unobtrusive as is convenient.

Notes are potentially very useful and informative. Textual and translational issues can be signalled by the translators, so that a reader can understand that a choice has been made, and perhaps even the sorts of reasoning that prompted the choice.

Cross References can suggest passages with similar wording, or that treat a similar topic or theme, or which might serve as background to the passage to which they are appended. These are extremely useful, and even (see above) can be considered part of the translation process, if the readership is deemed to include users who are new to the biblical world. Such references can become dangerous, especially when they are combined with words that suggest their meaning (rather than simply the Bible references). So, that is a practice to be avoided ;)

Explanatory information is added by the publisher (since this sort of note is often not composed by the translation team – though perhaps they should be, see my comment on Wayne’s post) may add notes explaining customs, historical details or other information that helps a reader understand the what text might have been intended to mean. This sort of note is potentially more “dangerous” as they might be used (and often are in “Study Bibles”) to push a particular line of interpretation, but they are very useful especially for beginning readers.

What would you add? Where do you think I have gone wrong? The aim is a translation that:

• is faithful to the biblical text
• is useful to a contemporary English-speaking (or other modern language) reader
• avoids unnecessary additions and interpretations of the text.

Note that you might like to consider (as I have done above) a beginner in reading the Bible as well as a biblically literate reader.

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It is probably no accident that the Bible I describe above is very like the French La Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible except that my copy has the iniquitous headings added :( but its cross reference apparatus is brilliant, and every Bible publisher should try to licence it and copy it as soon as possible ;)

I’ve been too busy today trying to incorporate dead and still living German scholars into my reading of Amos that I have not read my RSS feeds, but I took a few minutes out to Facebook, and saw Bill’s post “Y Jnny Cnt Rd d Bbl“. He mentioned my how not to read books (Thanks :) and also a Christianity Today article and Johnny Can’t Read the Bible. He discusses the interesting thought that clerical attempts to assist ploughboys [to borrow an idea apparently shared by Wycliffe, Tyndale and Luther among others] to become more biblically literate, may be by their nature self-defeating.

This caused me to reflect on how well my not reading advice works with the Bible (it is after all intended for not-reading modern academic and scholastic writing) sadly, or perhaps happily, it does not really work with the Bible. Or only to a limited extent… Clearly the start of the whole thing in Gen 1-3 is a big help, perhaps the end in Rev 21 also assists us… but looking the start and end of most books do not really help, and there is no table of contents provided, nor pictures or diagrammes :(

NZ is currently enjoying such an attempt, Bible Society New Zealand, Scripture Union and Wycliffe Bible Translators New Zealand are encouraging people to read 100 “essential” Bible passages. To which I (as the very model of a modern cleric) am offering 5 minute audio reflections.

In preparing these I have been reminded how interesting it is to compare the way the four Gospels each begin and end. The podcast of that 5 minute bible study will not appear for another month, so here’s a link to a special preview edition of the file ;)

[Repost from old blog, to allow reference here in a later post.]

Good students avoid reading books. To explain this I need to start by describing how average students read, so you will understand what I mean.

Head scratching by a r b o Many of us read wrong!

The average student faced with a book reads it. They begin at the beginning (or more likely at chapter one – which as we shall see is never the right place to start), and slowly – but only sometimes surely – plough through until with a sigh they finish the chapter. Little information and few ideas are retained, the words have mysteriously passed from eye to brain, only to drain out through the pores of the skin to be join the other lost words in linguistic limbo. Such reading is the next best thing to useless. That is time spent in “uselessness” would have been invested more wisely, for wasted time often pays a surprising dividend, time spent reading this way seldom does!

Having described how one ought not to read books, and hinted at why, let’s think about how to avoid reading books. The aim of the smart student is to read as little as possible but gain the maximum intellectual benefit from what one reads.

I’ve always been a slow reader, I try to cope by “reading smarter”.

One way I do this is to “waste time” overviewing something before reading it:

Contents list

Even if it is only chapter titles, this page or two should give you a fair idea of what the book is about and how it is organised – a few moments (1mo is shorter than 1min but much longer than 10secs) spent well on the contents list means you can already make intelligent guesses about where to find what, and even join a conversation about the book without sounding totally stupid.

At this stage, if you glance at the foreword (that’s the bit before the first chapter – it often tells you what the author though their book was about, and so is often vital reading!) – and the conclusion (yes like detective stories serious textbooks demand you read the ending early on!) you should be able to write a summary of the book in a few sentences – this is a skill worth practising for when you become a teacher, because then with all that marking you will no longer have the luxury of actually reading books ;-)

Go on, write the summary down! At the very worst you can look back at it later and shake your head over how naive you were before you understood the full complexity of the topic ;-)

Chapters

Look first at beginnings, endings and headings to try to get an idea of what the each chapter is about and how the different parts fit in.

Then skip through the material, not actually “reading” but reading a bit here and there to firm up your idea of what it is about and where it is going. By now you should be able to join a conversation about the chapter and sound like you read it!

Essential “reading“: they say a picture is worth 1000 words (1Kw in metric measures), well it is true a well chosen picture is worth 1Kw, though badly chosen pictures are worth-less (however, they are fun to look at, so worth wasting time on ;-) charts, tables and diagrams are usually (even when badly done) worth at least 1Kw – so spend time on them!

At this stage you should be able to write a brief summary of the chapter – yes, just like you did for the book earlier.

Moby's important reading by ktylerconk The right way to read is much like the way we "read" the newspaper or a magazine!

Important “bits”

Then read carefully the bits that you think matter most. Seldom (using this approach) will you actually “read” all of a chapter, but you will get a good idea of what is in it – often better than if you had scanned each of the words!

I find if I try to read page by page that it goes in my eyes and out my ears. If I try to read that way page after page it is all forgotten five minutes after I scanned the page. Such reading is a waste of time – don’t do it!

Sometimes with this scheme you will end up reading nearly everything twice – but it will be a chapter or book that really matters. Sometimes you will end up not reading some pages at all – but you will know where they are if you need them “one day”!

In summary

Do a survey of the book, or chapter (much as suggested above – playing about till you know what it contains, and where things are) then actually read carefully the “bits” that matter to you.