ABSTRACT
Based on the author’s personal experience of participating in a new German translation of the New Testament, the paper analyzes the influence of ideology or ideologies (in a wide sense of the word) both from the translatological and the theological point of view, illustrating it by means of several examples from the new translation in comparison with other renderings into English, French, Spanish, Italian, or Brazilian Portuguese. From the perspective of translation theory, ideological aspects refer to the definition of the skopos (‘Otherness Understood’), the selection of translation strategies and their justification for readers who have specific expectations based on their experience with previous translations of the New Testament or other biblical texts. From the theological standpoint, ideology is at stake in the unfamiliar chronological order in which the texts appear in the book and in the addition of texts from the first two centuries which were not included in the canon of the Church. Ideology also determines the interpretation of passages that are, or seem to be, ambiguous in the original or verses which have been translated in different manners by Catholic or Protestant translators. Last, but not least, feminist ideology has been taken account of in the use of inclusive language (e.g., speaking of fathers and mothers or brothers and sisters instead of fathers or brothers only).
