Emotional Consistency as Evidence of Dynamic Equivalence among English Translations of the Bible

Abstract

In order to be dynamically equivalent, different translations of the same text must have the same effects (including emotional effects) on an audience. In this research, six English translations of the Bible (four entire Bibles, one Tanakh, and one nearly complete translation) were scored with the Dictionary of Affect in Language, which quantifies the Pleasant, Active, and Imaging undertones of words, and were compared in terms of these undertones. In spite of small differences among them (translations into simpler modern English were significantly more Pleasant, Active, and Concrete), the translations were emotionally consistent and therefore dynamically equivalent to one another with respect to emotion and imagery. The median correlation among translations for Pleasantness, Activation, and Imagery was .9. The greatest variation in scores was associated with chapters. Emotional and imagery differences between books and chapters of the Bible are described and discussed.

The Common Emotional Plot of the Four Gospels

“…This study of fluctuations in emotional tone within the gospels provided some confirmatory results and some unexpected ones. Differences among gospels (with John being the most pleasant and Mark the least pleasant) are in agreement with previous results (Whissell, 2012). The fact that pleasantness decreases as we move from Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem to his crucifixion can easily be understood in terms of the events described.…”

“…The files employed were identified as pg8267, pg8268, pg8269, and pg8270 (for the gospels of Matthew through John, respectively). As has been shown previously, the emotional nature of various translations of biblical materials is highly consistent across translations (Whissell, 2012), so it was assumed that the particular translation studied would not seriously impact plot.…”

“…The sentiment analysis technique employed is the Dictionary of Affect in Language (Whissell, 2009). This technique has been applied to biblical materials, for example when matching the emotionality of different chapters from various translations (there was enormous consistency, Whissell, 2012), and in an attempt to discriminate Christian from Gnostic texts (which was successful, Whissell, 2008). The technique employs a list of several thousand words which previous respondents have rated in terms of the emotional dimension of Pleasantness.…”

“…This is due in part to the fact that the WEB is a modern, accessible, translation. It was one of the translations studied by Whissell (2012) when she noted the extreme emotional consistency across biblical translations of very different kinds. No system of sentiment analysis as yet exists that can treat New Testament Greek, so the choice made for this study was pragmatic, but not unreasonable.…”