[B-Greek] KATA SARKA

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Mar 17 15:41:16 EST 2005


At 11:48 AM -0800 3/17/05, Philip Silouan Thompson wrote:
>Kerry S. Yankowy wrote:
>> KATA SARKA
>> ESV: "according to worldly standards"
>> NIV: "by human standards"
>
>I have a related question. When translating a Greek (or other) text that is
>vague, or pregnant with possible interpretations, do most of you prefer to
>resolve that vagueness (as the ESV and NIV translators have attempted to do
>above) or to preserve it in the resulting text, resulting in a translation
>that's justly described as unclear or awkward?
>
>A pastoral setting, where the goal is to move from what a text says to what
>one should therefore do, is obviously different from a scholarly setting
>where the question is simply what the author meant, but both contexts
>require some judgment on the part of a translator.
>
>I'm inclined to see the NIV's "by human standards" (or "sinful nature" for
>SARX) as imposing a doctrinal filter on St Paul's text, where I'd rather see
>a translation faithfully reproduce the elliptical or unclear text he
>actually wrote; we have pastors and commentaries precisely for the task of
>opening up difficult sayings, so I don't like to see a translation turned
>into a doctrinal soapbox. Of course, when the translator resolves an unclear
>passage in harmony with my own dogma I'm less critical :-/

Yes, of course, "according to flesh" means just about nothing in English
and conceals rather than reveals the meaning of the phrase used by Paul.

In my opinion, one who doesn't know the original language(s) when
confronting this problem in a modern version would do well to use more than
one or even two version comparatively.

>I'm curious how folks here approach translating unclear passages and why. If
>this takes us off-topic, I'd still be interested in hearing from anyone so
>inclned, at himself AT philthompson DOT net.

The question is a good one but this is not the proper forum for it's
discussion; there's an excellent list that discusses this topic without
ceasing (I don't mean to be facetious--it's simply true that the
conversation keeps on keeping on and this issue is at the heart of it:
Bible-Translation. For info go to:

	http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/list/


-- 

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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