Technical Term or Technical Foul? (Baptizo) and the Problem of Transliteration as Translation

This essay explores the problems inherent in the practice of transliteration as translation. Using (baptizó) as an exemplar, it demonstrates that rather than reflecting the original meaning with anglicized versions of the original language, transliteration actually decontextualizes terms, imbuing them with meaning from the interpreter’s context or preformed assumptions. This practice also leads scholars to inappropriately treat transliterated words as technical terms when they were not used this way by the original audience.