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lingually, determining meaning, and using tape recorders. The first section discusses the
initial contact with informants, and the final section is concerned with various technical
and social problems associated with the use of tape recorders. The remaining sections
are concerned with specifically linguistic problems. The discussions are short and quite
general, but a large number of points essential to any successful program of field work
are made clearly and well.
The only technique described in great detail is the so-called pair test for phonological contrasts. Perhaps the most interesting discussions are those concerned with the
dangers involved in reliance on bilingual elicitation. A number of extremely useful
techniques are suggested for counteracting the distortions that may be introduced
through the use of a trade language. Some of these techniques are monolingual in the
sense that they make use of the language under study, but the discussions make it
quite clear that monolingual elicitation in this sense is quite different from the monolingual method needed in situations where no trade language is available.
The matter of informant training is not discussed in this paper despite its seemingly
obvious relevance. Experience with informants in the context of research on generative
grammars has convinced me that the deepest insights into particular grammatical
problems are gained when the informant is, in some sense, functioning as a linguist.
I t does not, in principle, seem a t all unreasonable to suppose that informants could be
systematically trained to view language in the way a linguist does. In fact, some efforts
in this direction have already shown promise. Of course, when we speak of informants
who are trained in this sense, we are no longer speaking of unsophisticatedinformants. The question then is, should a linguist persist in working with unsophisticated informants throughout the field work period? Or should a large part of his
effort be devoted to removing his informants from the ranks of the linguistically
unsophisticated?

Toward a Science of Translating, with Special Rcference to Principles and Procedures

Involved in Bible Tmnslating. EUGENEA. NIDA.Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964. x, 331
pp., bibliography, 47 figures, index, 4 tables. Glds. 25.
Reviewed by WILLIAM
L. WONDERLY,
American Bible Society
Here is a book that sticks to its subject but is a t the same time of much wider interest, for the author treats translation against a background not only of the various
approaches to structural linguistics, but also of such related disciplines a5 communication theory, symbolic logic, psychology, and cultural anthropology. In a brief review
such as this, it is impossible even to cover all the main features of the book; but certain
of its major themes will be commented upon, especially some of those with important
theoretical implications and with particular relevance to the field of anthropology.
Translation, which is both art and science, has usually been treated as the former;
Nidas book attempts to establish a more scientific approach by bringing to the subject of translation numerous insights which have become increasingly significant in a
number of related fields (p. 5). The special concern with Bible translating not only
reflects the authors profession (he is Secretary for Translations of the American Bible
Society), but actually broadens the scope of the book by introducing many aspects of
the subject that might otherwise be overlooked; for Bible translating, more than any
other translation work, has had to bridge the gap between languages and cultures that
are highly diverse and widely separated in both space and time.
Chapters 3 to 6, on meaning and communication, are perhaps of greatest theoretical
interest, although the later chapters have many implications for theory as well. In

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chapters 3 to 5, Nida treats the nature of meaning, in terms first of the various traditional approaches and then of a scientific approach that includes analysis of linguistic,
referential, and emotive meanings. He discusses the approach of the symbolic logicians
and the linguistic-anthropologicalapproach, noting the parallel developments between
them and the special contribution of the latter. Studies of language and culture, following Sapir, Whorf, and others, and a concern for the distribution of linguistic forms
within the totality of behavior, make possible a functional definition of meaning in
terms of contextual conditioning.
The semantic field (the range of meaning of an item) and the semantic context
(which marks the actual or terminal meaning of the item in its specific types of
occurrence) are interacting factors in a theory of meaning developed by Katz and Fodor
and here elaborated by Nida in its application to the problems of decoding and reencoding involved in translation. This approach goes beyond a purely descriptive
analysis, for the translator has to deal with language as a dynamic structure, capable
of producing an infinite number of meaningful combinations of symbols (p. 38) and
must be able to decode entirely new messages and to re-encode in another language
messages that will be equivalent to them. Recent work in generative-transformational
grammar has contributed significantly toward the orientation presented by Nida, in
relation both to meaning and to the formal features of language. The concept of linguistic transforms is used to establish linguistic meaning in terms of four basic functional
classes of lexical symbols or the semantic components that accompany them: objects,
events, abstracts, and relationals. Some words represent just one of these components,
others more than one; however, they are not just logical categories] but are based . . .
upon the manner in which lexical items function in transformations (p. 62) ; they
underlie a technique for analyzing a source-language text and generating an equivalent
message in the receptor language via an intermediate step of kernel-type sentences.
(Nida is now also preparing a textbook on The Theory and Practice of Translating, in
which he incorporates still further the application of generative-transformational grammar principles to theories of meaning and of translation, including the treatment of
words with multidimensional meanings.)
Referential meanings are treated in Chapter 5 by a number of techniques, with
emphasis on the Katz and Fodor analysis via context, as mentioned above. Of the other
techniques discussed, one of the most important, especially in view of its implications
for cultural anthropology, is that of the hierarchical analysis of related symbols. Certain words are related in terms of subordinate or specific vs. superordinate or generic
(e.g., the English series kangaroo, marsupial, mammal, animal). Cultures (and languages) differ in their manner of classifying items in hierarchical structure] and differ
most of all as one ascends from the lower levels (closer to that of perceptually distinguishable phenomena) to the higher levels (reflecting conceptually based classifications). Complexity of classification is usually found in semantic areas near some focus of
the culture. Nida insists that, contrary to what has often been asserted, the proportion
of lower to higher level vocabulary seems not to differ greatly from language to language
and that so-called primitive languages appear to have their full quota of generic termswhich investigators have often overlooked, partly because they are incommensurate
with the generic classifications in Western languages. Furthermore, this hierarchical
structuring at the conceptual level is far more indicative of a peoples world view than
is the labeling of objects nearer the perceptual level. Much the same is also said of the
emotive meanings (also Chapter S), which are even more subject to being classified in
terms of conceptualization as opposed to perception.

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Chapter 6, The Dynamic Dimension in Communication, treats the communication process in terms of the interaction of source (S), receptor (R), and message (M).
The decoding of a message is discussed in terms of information theory and the channel
capacity of the receptor. Literal translations, especially between linguistically and
culturally diverse languages, tend to overload the decoders channel; therefore a translation needs to be drawn out longer by building in redundancy, both linguistic and
cultural, if it is to communicate satisfactorily. Chapter 7 presents the translators role
by using an ethnolinguistic model of the different cultural matrices in which the communication event takes place, especially when translation spans wide temporal and
cultural gaps. Later chapters develop more specific principles and procedures and emphasize the difference between F-E (formal-equivalence) translations, which are basically source-oriented, and D-E (dynamic-equivalence) translations, which are oriented
primarily toward the receptors response to the message. During the past 50 years
, . . there has been a marked shift of emphasis from the formal to the dynamic dimension (p. 160) in both Biblical and secular translation.
Two important features of the book are the history, in Chapter 2, of the main currents of thought about translation from pre-Christian times to the present, and the
bibliography of over 2,000 items on translation and related fields (pp. 265-320), which
is one of the most extensive of its kind. It includes not only works on translation but
also books and articles on linguistic structure, psychology, anthropology, information
theory, machine translation, theology, stylistics, and literary criticism that bear in one
way or another upon translation theory.

Acoma Grammar and Texts. WICKR. MILLER.(University of California Publications in

Linguistics Volume 40.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1965. viii, 2.59 pp., bibliography. $5.00 (paper).
Reviewed by IRVINE
DAVIS,Summer Institute o/ Linguistics
Modern grammars of exotic languages often seem, upon superficial examination, to
fit a stereotyped mold. After the necessary preliminaries there is a section on phonology.
This is followed, in order, by a description of the morphophonemics, a more or less extensive treatment of morphology, and a few pages on syntax. Finally, to fill out the
volume, there may be a collection of texts. Although Millers Acoma Grammar and
Texts has all of these features, it does have a personality of its own. Morphophonemics,
which more often than not occupies an unpretentious place sandwiched between
phonology and morphology, is here assigned nearly half of the entire grammar. This
is the result, in part, of the structure of the Acoma language itself and, in part, of
Millers own approach to linguistic analysis and description.
Keresan bound morphemes, whether roots or affixes, are seldom invariable in their
phonemic form. Furthermore, the variant forms ordinarily exhibit the kinds of similarities and distributions that invite internal reconstruction. It is not my purpose here
to discuss the extent to which historical considerations should influence the synchronic
description of a language, except to note that a clear-cut distinction between synchronic
and diachronic linguistics may be illusory. Miller readily recognizes that he is indulging
in a form of reconstruction when he sets up basic morphophonemic forms from which
variants may be derived by the application of a complex set of ordered rules. Although
the morphophonemic rules, in general, reflect historical changes, he correctly points out
that the approach does not aim at reconstructing features that presumably characterized the language a t any specific time horizon. Whatever approach is used in relation to