Stefan Felber

Chomsky’s Influence on Eugene Nida’s Theory
of Dynamic Equivalence in Translating

This paper investigates the linguistic background of Eugene A. Nida’s theo-

ry of dynamic equivalence in translating. In the early works of Nida on
translation, which were much better received than his later studies, he refers
to Noam Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar as one of his main
sources. Some scholars hold that Nida’s theory is heavily dependent on
Chomsky. Others (critics of Nida’s theory and proponents alike) do not see
much of Chomsky’s influence on Nida, if any.
The essay argues that Nida is indeed dependent on Chomsky’s idea of basic
kernels and that this dependency had impairing effects on Bible translation.

1. Interest1
When I studied theology in the late 80s and early 90s of the last century at four
different universities in Germany, astonishingly, almost none of the Dynamic
Equivalence Bible translations were brought to my attention. Our use of Ger-
man Bible translations was almost restricted to Luther, Elberfelder and the
Catholic Einheitsübersetzung.
The modern Bible translation movement sparked my interest only in the
90s, when I was vice-pastor in a state church congregation in Bavaria. Some
friends and I began to use dynamic equivalence translations in order to convey
the biblical message to our youth more easily. But our understanding of the
background and of the limitations of these translations was too limited to per-
form this in a theologically responsible way.
Later, after I was hired as a seminary lecturer in Old Testament exegesis
and Hebrew, I learned how large parts of the evangelical movement were about
to abandon traditional theological language, including KJV and Luther’s Bible.
Finally, I got more and more uncomfortable, as I realized a variety of distor-
tions in the new texts and, therefore, began to study their background(s): Bibles
as for instance the Good News Bible are generally viewed as incarnations of the

___________
1 This is my very first English paper, so I apologise for any errors in English style and
syntax. It presents a summary of what I have dealt with in more detail in my forthcoming
book »Bibelübersetzung als Kommunikation? Eugene A. Nida und die dynamisch-
äquivalente Übersetzung der Bibel« (chapter 2.4).
254 Stefan Felber

so-called Dynamic Equivalence Theory of translating, grounded on the works

of Eugene A. Nida (1914–2011).
In 1943, the American Bible Society hired Nida as a linguist and a transla-
tion consultant in order to know why so many new translations remained un-
read. This development, for the most part, eventually led into a new era of
translating. In his new position, Nida became a very busy translation consultant
and an extremely prolific writer. In 1947, e.g., he published Bible Translating:
An Analysis of Principles and Procedures, in 1964, Toward a Science of Trans-
lating, and in 1969 his Theory and Practice of Translation, co-authored by
Charles Taber. The latter two of them were very well received, well respected
and reprinted several times. Mainly in his writings brought forward in the 60s
and 70s, Nida referred to Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar as a means of
providing kernels, i.e. short, declarative statements, or »elementary sentences«,
which obviously can be transferred in other tongues more easily.

2. Early Stages of Generative Grammar

This short consideration remains restricted to the early linguistic studies of
Chomsky, since later ones are not thus relevant to Nida’s translation theory.
One of Chomsky’s crucial innovations was that he abandoned a taxonomic
study of language and went on to a generative one. Language is viewed not
from the outside, but from the inside – i.e. his so-called mentalism. This point
may be illustrated rapidly by quoting a dialogue, performed in 1958:

Chomsky: The verb perform cannot be used with mass-word objects: one
can perform a task, but one cannot perform labor.
A.G. Hatcher: How do you know, if you don’t use a corpus and have not
studied the verb perform?
Chomsky: How do I know? Because I am a native speaker of the English
language.2

Chomsky recognized that taxonomics failed to explain the difference between

»John is eager to please« and »John is easy to please«. In his »Syntactic struc-
tures« (1957) he established transformation rules which derive surface struc-
tures from deep structures. He did so in order to account for the apparent ambi-
guity of sentences as »I like her cooking«. Thus, the aim of linguistic descrip-
tion became to construct a theory that would account for the infinite number of
sentences of a natural language, performed by a restricted number of words.
»Such a theory would show which strings of words were sentences and which

___________
2 Harris: Linguistics Wars, 97 (emphasis orig.). »Chomsky wants access to the data in his
own head, which strictly positivist methods would prohibit« (98).
Chomsky’s Influence on Eugene Nida’s Theory 255

were not, and would provide a description of the grammatical structure of each
sentence.«3
In his 1965 »Aspects of the Theory of Syntax«, also labelled »Standard
Theory«, Chomsky’s goal turned even more ambitious. He set out to rationalize
every relationship between phonetics and semantics. He would provide a com-
prehensive model of the competence of a native speaker of any given language.
His grammar is about competence, not just performance.

3. Relevance of Chomsky for Nida

What was important for Nida, in my view, is the following. In the first place,
the adoption of Chomsky’s mentalism resulted in a distancing of form and
meaning. Meaning was located no longer in the surface structure but in the
deep structure of a sentence or of a text. The two were interrelated by transfor-
mations without – more or less – adding, deleting or changing the meaning.
Chomsky located meaning primarily in the kernels (later the term »deep struc-
ture« was preferred).4
Second, deep structures were viewed as universals. A child, said Chomsky,
knows a lot more than it has learned. Deep structures – say: the universal
grammar – are known from birth and a small number of examples of surface
structures are sufficient to enable the creation of new and correct sentences (the
»poverty of the stimulus« argument).
Third, Chomsky claimed to inherit the Cartesian Linguists of Port-Royal
(Antoine Arnauld, Claude Lancelot, Pierre Nicole). He did not intend to estab-
lish René Descartes as his direct precursor. Nevertheless, he claimed that his
thoughts about universals were at stake in the early stages of the enlightenment.
Given that, he tried to prove not to have drawn on medieval ignorance and
obscurantism, but on modern philosophy. 5
Example:
a. Invisible God created the visible world.
At Port-Royal, this sentence was considered as a statement that includes
the following sub-statements:
b. God is invisible.
c. God created the world.
d. The world is visible.

___________
3 Searle: Chomsky’s Revolution, 3.
4 Harris: Linguistics Wars, 84.
5 This point is not important for Nida’s own view of translation, but it is important for
some of his critics on the continent, who accuse Nida for adopting the linguistics of a ra-
tionalist philosopher (cf. Hempelmann: Wortgetreu oder leserfreundlich?, 47ss).
256 Stefan Felber

For Chomsky, too, sentences b, c and d were kernels of a. From here, as we

will see, it was only a small step to get at Nida’s deep structure analysis and to
the stage of restructuring of a »closest natural equivalent«.

3.1 Nida’s use of Generative Grammar

Until the mid-70s, Nida used Chomsky’s studies widely. Looking back in 2003,
Nida summarized his relationship as follows:
»Stratificational Grammar provided some important insights … but it was
quickly swamped by enthusiasm for Chomsky’s view of language. Chomsky
chose to highlight the dichotomy between performance and competence and
to make competence the core of language, which touches reality only in
sounds and semantics, but so many of the really important aspects of a lan-
guage were dismissed as representing mere subcategorization. In reality,
however, all we really know about competence comes from performance.
I was personally pleased to use the term ›kernel‹ because it fit well the kinds
of distinctions I was already making between basic combinations of entities,
activities, processes, states, characteristics and relations. But I never could
understand the need for complete abstraction, nor for Chomsky’s rather rad-
ical revisions.«6
As to his 1964 »Toward a Science of Translating«, however, we must regard
Chomsky’s influence as crucial, simply because Nida himself did so:
»Though it is true that the basic approach to translation is primarily ›de-
scriptive‹, nevertheless, it is based upon a concept of language which goes
beyond the more narrow confines of a so-called ›taxonomic grammar.‹ In
other words, following Noam Chomsky (1957), we are not content to look
upon a language as some fixed corpus of sentences, but as a dynamic mech-
anism capable of generating an infinite series of different utterances. An ad-
equate description of a language must in some way or other account for the
capacity of the individual speaker of a language to generate such a stream of
speech and to interpret what he hears, even though he has usually never
heard the particular combinations before. This generative view of language
seems to be particularly important for the translator. …«7
»The most effective means by which we may deal with these problems of
diverse meaningful relationships between structurally similar types of ex-
pressions is to employ a generative type of grammar which makes full use
of transformation (Chomsky, 1957, 1961b, 1962). A generative grammar is
based upon certain fundamental kernel sentences, out of which the language
builds up its elaborate structure by various techniques of permutation, re-
placement, addition, and deletion. For the translator especially, the view of
language as generative device is important, since it provides him first with a
___________
6 Nida: Fascinated by Languages, 141.
7 Nida: Toward a Science, 9f.
Chomsky’s Influence on Eugene Nida’s Theory 257

technique for analyzing the process of decoding the source text, and second-
ly with a procedure for describing the generation of the appropriate corre-
sponding expressions in the receptor language. … for the translator, who
perhaps more than anyone else must take language in its dynamic aspect, a
view of grammar as a generative device has many distinct advantages.«8
In his 1969 »Theory and Practice of Translation«, Nida went on to concretize
these insights methodically into his famous three-stage model:

Nida’s three-stage translation model 9

The vertical moves – i.e. those going to kernel X and from kernel Y – are valid
only within Chomsky’s framework. For Nida, it was this framework that ulti-
mately provides a ratio which stood up to scientific scrutiny. So he stressed that
this model is not just one aspect of his translation theory, but »In effect, the
remainder of this book is an exposition of Figure 6 [= graphic shown above], of
the justification for it, and of the methods and procedures by which it may be
implemented. A useful analogy is that of crossing a broad, deep, swift river. If
one does not know how to swim, and does not have a boat, it is necessary to go
up or down the bank of the river until a place is found which is shallow enough
to serve as a ford. The time and effort spent walking along one side of the river
is not only not wasted; it is absolutely essential to the crossing.«10
In the 70s, Nida continued to highlight transformational grammar as the
most useful means for translating, e.g. in one essay entitled »Implications of
Contemporary Linguistics for Biblical Scholarship « (1972). In his »Linguistic
Models for Religious Behavior« (also 1972), Nida expanded the notions of
deep and surface structures even to nonlinguistic realities, e.g. to different hab-
its of worship and prayer, even the sacraments. The following quotes stem from
his »Linguistic Models«, the table format is mine:
___________
8 Nida: Toward a Science, 59f., similarly 68.
9 Nida and Taber: Theory and Practice, 33.
10 op.cit. 34.
258 Stefan Felber

Generative Religion
Grammar
deep »where such funda- (1) supernatural powers;
structure mental features as (2) communication techniques (from
time, space, agency, people to supernatural powers and
instrument, object, v.v.);
and event are struc- also: »certain potentialities of the basic
tured« (14) elements« (15).
kernel »… one-clause basic »… the simplest possible combination
structures which of such elements and characteristics in
arrange the elements the deep structure, e.g. (1) man prays
of the deep structure to God for healing, (2) communicates
into basic subject- a vision« etc.
predicate structures »In every instance, therefore, there is
and out of which the the explicit or implicit participation of
elaborate surface the supernatural powers and a com-
structures may be munication which takes place. The
formed by trans- result is a change or notification of a
formation« (14) change« (15).
surface »which are the forms Example worship: »singing, offering,
structure of language as actu- prayer, exhortation, all with highly
ally used by speak- involved ritual patterns and subject to
ers« (14f.) an almost endless variety of transfor-
mations« (15f.). »In all such surface-
structure expressions of religious life
the time and space setting are very
important« (times and places of ser-
vices) (16).

For the first time, Nida mentioned problems of transformational generative

(TG) grammar in his 1976 essay »A Framework for the Analysis and Evalua-
tion of Theories of Translation«: adherents of TG grammar, he said, tend to
deal linguistic facts without real content and context. This lengthy essay
demonstrates Nida’s outgrowth from a linguistic and generative grammar
framework into a sociolinguistic paradigm.
In the 80s, Nida’s enthusiasm for Chomsky seemed to be extinguished. In
1980 we read »The failure of T-G grammar to deal with language performance
has indirectly contributed to the development of sociolinguistics … Socio-
linguistics is not a theory of language, but a particular emphasis upon language
as used in a society, and not upon some reductionist or refined form of the
Chomsky’s Influence on Eugene Nida’s Theory 259

language which no one actually speaks. There is no such thing as an ideal

speaker-hearer and the competence of such a person is a reductionist myth,
although often a useful way of talking about the differences between underlying
and surface structures«.11
Thus, Nida kept the kernel method, but more than ever before tried to un-
derstand language as being in (linguistic and nonlinguistic) context. In his well-
known essay of 1986, »From one language to another: Functional equivalence
in translating« (co-authored by Jan de Waard) and in his relatively unknown
book »Language, Culture, and Translating« (1993), he deals with major syntac-
tic structures without referring to TG grammar at all.
It is an intricate matter to judge whether Nida, in the 1960s and 70s, has
dealt with TG grammar justly. It is safe to say that Nida ignored one hint in
Chomsky’s »Aspects«, which pointed out that the existence of profound uni-
versals does imply that every language is constructed by the same pattern, but it
does not imply that one can derive an effective procedure for translating. 12
Nida did use linguistic universals, and in doing so, his translation theory is
linked to Cartesian Linguistics. Although he ignored Chomsky’s reluctance to
deduce an effective procedure of translation, he based his studies on genuine
Chomskyan paradigms. Form and content/kernels were related by trans-
formations. Nida found Chomsky’s theory a tool of paramount importance to
establish translation theory as a science. Therefore Gentzler rightly estimated
that Chomsky was a »godsend« for Nida.13 Randy Harris, in his »Linguistics
Wars«, wrote with a chuckle: »Chomsky’s conception of science, which was
closely in tune with contemporary philosophy of science … was one of the
most attractive features of his program. The promise of getting at meaning was
another. The promise of getting at mind was another. The brew was intoxi-
cating, and customers were lining the bar.«14
Nida was, I assume, one of those customers, and his translation theory in-
troduced a lot of the Western positivistic denigration of ambiguity, metaphor 15
and poetry into the realm of translation and, in particular, the Bible translation

___________
11 Nida: Language, Culture, and Translating, 18f.
12 Chomsky: Aspekte der Syntax-Theorie, 46f. (emphasis added). Apparently, translation is
not in sight in »Syntactic Structures« (1957). All of Chomsky’s examples for
transformations explicitly remains in the English realm (pp. 6. 31. 35. 61. 65. 68. 80. 84.
87. 89. 106f.).– Cf. Stolze: Übersetzungstheorien, 48: »Auch wenn Chomsky keineswegs
an das Übersetzen dachte, konnte er nicht verhindern, daß seine Gedanken von
verschiedenen Übersetzungstheoretikern ›benutzt‹ wurden, um eigene Vorstellungen
theoretisch zu untermauern.«
13 Gentzler: Translation Theories, 46.
14 Harris: Linguistics Wars, 34.
15 As for translation examples, I refer to my forthcoming book indicated above (cf. footnote 1).
260 Stefan Felber

movement. So Sherry Simon is right to blame the Good News Bible as an »re-
fus total de l’esthétisme.«16

4. Overview of Recent Studies

Recent studies have reacted to the relationship of Nida and Chomsky in a great
variety of ways. There are those who pay no attention to the problem, as in the
case of the dissertation of Stephen Howard Doty (Auckland 2007), and in an
article of Cay Dollerup (2009). Others assume Nida and Chomsky came to-
gether from different ends (Eric North 1974, Philip Stine 2004). Jakob van
Bruggen (1978) and Anthony Howard Nichols (1996), who published quite
comprehensive and critical volumes on dynamic equivalence theory, recog-
nized only a partial influence of Chomsky on Nida. Finally, there is the group
of those who see Nida’s most popular writings (i.e. those of the 60s) as being
fundamentally dependent on generative grammar (Liu Junping, Edwin
Gentzler, Radegundis Stolze, Heinzpeter Hempelmann and myself).
Nida’s relationship to Chomsky has changed, as we have seen. But the im-
petus to communicate as clearly, straightforwardly and unambiguously as pos-
sible, which had been undergirded by reducing texts to kernels – this impetus
has been maintained over decades, and this impetus, whether appreciated or
rejected, contributed a lot to the success of dynamic equivalence translations in
the marketplace.

5. Critical Remarks
1. a) Chomsky’s science or philosophy of language presupposes the Cartesian
notion of ideae innatae, or inborn ideas. If we transfer this notion into the
realm of religion, we run into an optimistic anthropology: carrying the
truth in us already, all that has to be done is to remind us.
b) However this be judged, the result evidently was a diminishing of the
traditional and biblical language and theology of the word and the sacra-
ments as the media salutis, i.e. the means of salvation, or, in modern termi-
nology: the performative aspect of language.
c) Instead, the attention is moved to the informative aspect of language, i.e.
to bring the existing thoughts of the people in the right order.
2. A concept of language which is to do justice to religious and poetic texts
and the entanglement or interrelatedness of forms and contents must ac-
count for their ambiguities and richness of meaning. The tendency of trans-
lators to diminish ambiguity, to streamline and simplify target language
texts has made many customers buy the new Bibles, but we ended up with
___________
16 Sherry: Délivrer la Bible, 431.
Chomsky’s Influence on Eugene Nida’s Theory 261

a serious loss of theology and thoughtfulness in all churches where dynam-

ic equivalence translations are endorsed.
David Daniells, at the end of his 900 p.-vol. »The Bible in English«:
»… for some large groups of consumers, the Bible, it seems, must not be
found disturbing, whether by calling God (in Jesus’ words) ›Father‹ (which
is ›patriarchy‹), or as with The Message, jettisoning theology altogether to
suggest that it may just be possible that you may not at all times feel totally
good about yourself. That is an even longer way from Tyndale. «17 »Ditch-
ing ›traditional theological language‹ can easily slide into ditching theolo-
gy.«18
Isn’t it crazy that we get Bible translation advertisements like »God’s
Word. Today’s Bible Translation that says what it means «, and then, writ-
ten in capitals: »NO INTERPRETATION NEEDED«19?
3. It is unfortunate that Nida did not review his translation theory and method
thoroughly after he forwent to build upon generative grammar. By and
large, he added to his method more sensitiveness to literary structures, but
never broke with his foundations he published in the 1960s.
4. Bible translations are often judged according to the degree of ease in which
they present texts and messages to the reader or hearer (adopting infor-
mation theory, Nida’s measure is »channel capacity«20). But in the first
place they are to be judged on the basis of text comparisons and on the ba-
sis of their respective translation philosophies rather than on hypothetical
recipient responses.

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___________
17 Daniell: The Bible, 735.
18 op.cit., 759.
19 Smith: Fall of Interpretation, 39.
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(Nida: Message and Mission, 86f.).
262 Stefan Felber

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