[B-Greek] Idiom

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jan 11 07:31:56 EST 2005


At 4:14 PM +1100 1/11/05, David McKay wrote:
>G'day Chester
>
>
>
>
><<<They are wooden because their form is dictated not by how a Greek,
>following proper Greek syntax,  would express what you think the terms
>express, but by a desire to produce the word order and the syntax of the
>Hebrew expression they translate. >>>
>
>Oh, I see what you mean what you mean by "wooden" now, although I see no
>relevance in your mentioning of this, as any translation of the Hebrew will
>be wooden.
>
>I'm only an amateur, but I reckon that a translation from one language to
>another doesn't have to be wooden at all. I don't see why you would think
>this.

I quite agree with David here, and I think that all the best translators
have always understood this: that a good translation is NOT a literal
word-for-word equivalent of the original-language text but a restatement of
the substance of that original-language text into acceptable grammatical
structure and idiom of the target language. And surely the expressions EIS
TON AIWNA and EIS TOUS AIWNAS or EIS AIWNAS TWN AIWNWN must be awkward if
Englished as "into the age" or "into the ages" or "into ages of ages"--when
the standard English equivalent is clearly simply "forever."
-- 

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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