Robert Alter and the Art of Bible Translation

The success of a translation, in my view, is defined by the extent to which it is able to move an audience closer to its source text. The integrity of a translation, on the other hand, lies in the faithfulness with which the translator adheres to his or her particular principles. Since these principles—especially in the case of English translations of the Bible—are usually spelled out, serious readers are able to gauge just what a translator has accomplished. In robert Alter’s case, he has made his goal clear in the articulate introductions to his Bible translations. In one passage, he characterizes his work as “an experiment in re-presenting the Bible—and, above all, biblical narrative prose—in a language that conveys with some precision the semantic nuances and the lively orchestration of literary effects of the Hebrew and at the same time has stylistic and rhythmic integrity as literary English” (Alter 2004, xvi). Alter has long demonstrated that he is a perceptive reader of the Hebrew text, and his explanatory notes are often illuminating in their discussion of the text’s rhetoric, style, and tone. But literary criticism is not the same as translation. to put it another way, being a perceptive reader is not the same as being an accomplished performer in print. I have tried on numerous occasions to sit down with Alter’s translations and read them aloud, and to date I rarely experience them as echoes of the Hebrew text. My specific objections fall into several related categories. I will begin by examining narrative, focusing on The Five Books of Moses and The David Story. Alter frequently speaks of “cadence” in both languages, which raises the question of how he hears the text. From the layout in these books, he appears to perceive it in fairly long blocs of material, occasionally broken up into paragraphs, not unlike narrative texts in English. Here is an example from the opening pages of Genesis (1:7-10), within the creation story: