Acts 2:38

Glenn Blank glennblank at earthlink.net
Sun May 27 23:05:28 EDT 2001



I had written,

>> Of course, the problem of the naturalness of the translation remains.
>Does
>> "be baptized *for* the remission of sins" sound unnatural to your ears?

Wayne answered
  >From: "Wayne Leman" <Wayne_Leman at SIL.ORG>
   >Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 21:51:21 -0600
>No, sorry.
>I'm OK with the following, and probably some other possibilities. I just
>need to have something that sounds grammatical to my ears. A lot of what I
>call Gringlish doesn't sound grammatical to my English ears. 

OK.  It sounded natural to me, but maybe my ears have been Grinlishized, or
may KJVized :)

>I like my Greek
>to be Greek and my English to be English. These are OK in my dialect of
>English:

       "Repent and be baptized so that your sins will be forgiven."
(purpose)
        "If you repent and be baptized your sins will be forgiven." (result)

I agree that English needs to be English, and I am still considering your
comments to the effect that much of what we find ambiguous in Greek was
likely *not* ambiguous to the mother tongue reader.  I would still caution
against overtranslating, and I would be tempted to ask what clues there are
in this passage that would favor purpose over result or vice-versa.  But
upon further reflection, it seems to me that in this context there is in
effect no difference between the two.

>Are all your posts "blank" messages?  <g>
>
>Wayne
>---
>Wayne Leman
>Bible translation site: http://www.geocities.com/bible_translatio

Yes, Wayne, and if you open one of my posts, you have "drawn a blank"   :)

Yours in the search,
glenn blank
Pensacola, FL





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