Recitation: The Easily Mistaken Method
By Wesley Newman // CBT
Recitation Is Not Translation
What is the most faithful way to put the Bible on screen?
Some people have proposed the answer…
Read the biblical text exactly as written and place images alongside it.
And to their credit, some films have done just that, and done it with a good level of production quality.
But there's an issue…
While that is one way to stay close to our modern English translations of Scripture, films built on this thesis face two major issues.
It’s not a translation.
It’s not entertaining.
These films can preserve a previous translation of Scripture (NIV, ESV, KJV) with great care.
But it doesn't translate Scripture into cinema.
This form of biblical filmmaking is closer to an audiobook than to a narrative film.
Because films use images and audio cues cut together to create meaning. Normally, without the need for a narrator who holds the hand of the audience by explaining every piece of the narrative.
But these films firmly rely on a narrator to guide the story by reciting an English translation over visuals that act out what the narrator describes.
It is better described as cinematic recitation.
How Does A Recitation Work?
A cinematic recitation takes a verbal translation of Scripture and presents it alongside moving images.
The narrator tells us Jesus enters a place.
So…
We watch Jesus enter.
The narrator tells us someone speaks.
So…
We watch the actor speak.
The words tell the story, while the image illustrates what is being recited.
And while this can be a legitimate approach to putting the Bible on screen, it does not fully utilize the language of cinema.
Cinema Has Its Own Language
Translation requires more than preserving words.
It requires communicating an idea's structure and meaning in a new language.
Film is a language.
Instead of letters and symbols on a page, it is composed of images, sound, performance, editing, composition, movement, time, and the relationship between them.
It is a visceral language.
And in a cinematic translation, the filmmaker is given the responsibility of a translator.
They must determine how to use the language of cinema to create the most accurate on-screen version of the written story.
Using the Whole Medium
This is not to say that recitation is bad and translation is good.
They are simply different projects.
Recitation keeps Scripture primarily verbal while the language of film is minimized into a supporting role.
Recitation puts the weight of storytelling on the narrator and his or her pre-translated words.
But cinematic translations ask the filmic language itself to carry more of the meaning.
The central question becomes:
What and how is the biblical narrative communicating in its original language, and how can the language of cinema bring that to a theatrical audience?
That question does not give filmmakers permission to rewrite Scripture.
It should make them more accountable to it.
The goal is not to make the Bible more cinematic.
The goal is to use the full language of cinema to communicate what the biblical narrative already communicates.
Recitation can present the text on screen.
But translation tells the narrative through the language of film.
