The Bible revisited
The Bible, the Bible, forever renewed... With this new translation, Frédéric Boyer, the man behind the project, hopes to "get away from the conventional and often academic language of the existing translations with a real work of literature".
Six years ago, as a trial run, the manager of Éditions Bayard entrusted a plain translation of the Psalms, by Marc Sevin, to the poet Olivier Cadiot. The result was amazing. "Very short lines, a forceful rhythm", the publisher remembers. The translator was impressed: "It’s no longer the Psalms... and yet it’s all there."
In a few months, twenty-seven exegetes and twenty contemporary French and Québecois writers were brought together. The translations were done by two or three people, using a collective method based on translation workshops: the exegete always has the last word, but the writer has a totally free hand to inhabit the raw material produced by his or her partner.
The result of five years of sometimes stormy, often gratifying collective work: a great variety of styles, which restores the original polyphony of the Bible (from Genesis to the Book of Revelation, there are over sixty different styles of writing, spread over a millennium). The new translation also makes a spectacular break with the "over-poetizing" of earlier versions. The authors use a simple, unadorned style, designed for reading aloud. Thus for Jean Echenoz, the biblical "knowing" becomes an explicit "sleeping with", while Florence Delay translates "Amen" by "All right!", a far cry from the traditional "Verily, verily, I say unto thee".
This translation of the Bible will obviously disconcert older readers, who will probably be too familiar with previous interpretations to accept the new version without a murmur. On the other hand, it is likely to appeal to any reader, believer or sceptic, attracted by an innovative version free of the dogmatism of the major work of Judeo-Christian culture.
La Bible (The Bible - new translation), éd. Bayard, Paris; éd. Médiaspaul, Montréal, 2001, 3.199 pages, 44,97 euros.
With over ten million copies distributed each year, the Bible is by far the most widely sold and translated (2,000 languages) book on the planet. In the French-speaking world sales are falling but are still considerable. With 100,000 copies, the French language Jerusalem Bible, translated by the Biblical School of Jerusalem, alone represents half of annual sales. In second place is the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, of Protestant origin. Other no less prestigious French translations are published by Gallimard or le Seuil. There are also the Jewish bibles, and the liturgical bible, supervised by the French episcopacy, which has a new translation in progress.
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