[B-Greek] Beginner Struggling with Translating
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Dec 3 12:17:45 EST 2004
At 8:38 AM -0600 12/3/04, Mitchell, John W wrote:
>
>I'm working my way though Mounces' BBG. One group of exercises for this
>chapter is translating various sentence fragments. I'm really
>struggling to get my answers to match Mounces. For instance, this is
>one of the fragements I'm supposed to translate (I haven't covered verbs
>yet which is why he provides the definition of the first word):
>
>GNWRISQH (he/she/it might be made known) NUN TAIS ARCAIS KAI TAIS
>EXOUSIAIS.
>
>Mounce translates it as:
>
>It might be made known now to the rules and the authorities.
I take it that GNWRISQH is not an unaugmented aorist passive 3 sg. but
really the subjunctive form GNWRISQHi. In this context I don't think I'd
had offered that without a hINA or something that would take a subjunctive
form. And in fact this is the text of Eph 3:10.
>Before I looked at the answer, I didn't understand what to do with two
>words in the dative. Does the clause TAIS ARCAIS KAI TAIS EXOUSIAIS
>represent the indirect object? If so, how would I have known that ahead
>of time? Also there doesn't seem to be a subject. It appears the the
>subject in contained within the verb, but if so, how would I know to use
>'It' and not 'He' or 'She'?
Well, that's precisely my complaint about context-less sentence fragments;
my own preference has always been for paragraph-length reading segments.
Yes, TAIS ARCAIS KAI TAIS EXOUSIAIS is an indirect object, although you
wouldn't know that without knowing that both nouns represent authorities
deemed to be persons exercising authority. As for the subject, when in
doubt, supply a "he" "she" or "it" from the verb's 3rd-person form--and if
all you're given is the fragment as you've cited it, don't let anyone tell
you that it couldn't just as well be "that he might be made known" or "that
she might be made known."
>Also when a word means multiple things, such as the word EXOUSIAIS which
>I learned can mean power or authority, how do I know which English word
>matches the sentence thought best? Is this something that just comes
>with experience? Does this get easier with time? I've been working
>hard to memorize the vocab, noun endings and articles and I thought I
>was doing well. But this has got me thinking I've misunderstood
>something.
Well, I think that for the sake of this exercise, it doesn't matter that
much which of multiple sense of a word you are using. Again, I personally
think that the problems you are encountering are built into a system that
gives you such context-less sentence fragments to cope with. On the other
hand, there are many on this list who have learned from that textbook and
workbook and who teach from it. They'll surely give you a different slant
on your questions--and probably a much more helpful answer.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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