Agency in (re)translating the Bible: the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of taking the ‘liberty’ of (re)creating the ‘untouchable’ sacred texts

The basis of this project is the re-appropriation of texts from the Catholic Bible in processes of both personal and institutional writing. The endeavor is to examine how two different authors (a literary and an institutional one) integrated specific biblical excerpts into their own discourses. The first is Colleen Carroll Campbell and her autobiographical work My Sisters the Saints: a Spiritual Memoir; the second is the Vatican and its official English version of Pope Paul VI’s speech as delivered before the United Nations General Assembly, in October 1965. Considering re-appropriation as a form of translation, and since the Bible is the most translated book in the world, both authors and their texts are considered (re)translators and (re)translations, respectively.
The research will strive to understand how and why these authors took the “liberty” to change the biblical versions they admitted to have used as sources. Rhetorical criticism will be the methodological procedure followed, since there are several implied meanings involved in both works, deeply related to the contexts upon which each author’s narratives rely: Colleen Carroll Campbell’s personal life story and the historical, political context during the pontiff’s address to the UN. The study will be guided by the following research questions: (i) How did the authors re-appropriate excerpts from the Catholic Bible: what changes have they done when compared to the sources they indicated? (ii) Why did they pursue such re-appropriation: to facilitate the understanding of the biblical messages themselves by integrating them in a fluent, clear discourse, or to sustain their own specific messages with textual, ideological references? (iii) Would the authors promote a different interpretation of the excerpts had they abided by “official”, authenticated versions of the Bible instead? The concept of agency within Translation Studies will thus be the basis of this study.