[B-Greek] re my wooden interlinear translations
william zeitler
william at faithfulbible.com
Fri Nov 4 20:29:35 EST 2005
Some years ago, in a very dark period of my life, I did a 'wooden interlinear
translation' of the GNT as an exercise to confront the GNT for myself up
close and personal. (At the urging of friends it's up on the Web for free,
which is about what it's worth -- http://www.faithfulbible.com/nt .)
Having done that, I find your comments about Mark being 'grotesque'
perplexing. Each of the NT writers definitely has his own style; and so do
Daniel Steele vs. Michael Crichton.
Have you studied foreign languages besides Greek? Have you read/translated a
lot of Greek? I know I've struggled a lot to see beyond our collective
English/Americo-centric view of the entire Cosmos (with mixed success), and
that definitely includes 1st century Palestine.
Try to imagine growing up in 1st century Palestine, with Greek and Aramaic in
your ears, from your mother's lips, and their entirely different view of the
Cosmos, and utterly different technologies for making their economy and daily
life work, and the historical context in which they found themselves. If you
grew up in that context, would Mark really be 'grotesque'? I don't think so.
I think we have to approach the 1st Century Texts knowing we are forever
outsiders, forever foreigners, really. Knowing that Greek was for the natives
of that era a living language, and we are the visitors from a future foreign
country with Greek as a second language.
And worse, we can forever only listen, we can never speak to the citizens of
1st century Palestine and have them respond and correct us.
(I truly appreciate the enormous expertise of certain participants of this
forum, but I submit that that still can never be the same as the command of
Greek a learned person of that era like Luke would have, for example, an
educated man for whom Greek was a living native language.)
Even with modern Greek, if I find myself in Greece having studied Greek as a
second language, and I find some native Greek 'grotesque', I would be
inclined to assume that that reaction probably reflects my own ignorance, and
not the language-incompetence of someone for whom Greek is their mother
tongue. Maybe they ARE using 'grotesque' Greek! But I would be very, very
slow under the circumstances to come to that conclusion. How much more true
when they aren't just geographically distant, but temporally distant by two
millenia as well!
william zeitler
On Friday 04 November 2005 01:11 pm, Dan Gleason wrote:
> re my wooden interlinear translations
>
> Dr Conrad wrote: Dan, you've made perfectly clear that you intend to
> persist with this "interlinear" mode of transliteration despite the fact
> that several respondents have called attention to its inaccurate
> representation of the sense of the Greek. So here "immerse" for "BAPTIZW"
> has been faulted by several respondents as inaccurate certainy for the
> second verb form here (BAPTISEI), and while you might think "a Holy
> Spirit" accurately represents the Greek text PNEUMATI hAGIWi, what you're
> deriving from the Greek is pidgin- English rather than an equivalent of
> what the Greek text says. What's wrong with this "interlinear" style of
> "translation" is that it's based on an assumption that the "forest" of a
> sequence of discourse is no less and no more than but exactly equal to
> the sum of the "trees" of words inside that sequence. I think that's
> been stated in different ways in several of the responses to your
> idiosyncratic renderings of Marcan texts, but I felt it was worth
> reiterating "yet once more again," despite the fact that you've made it
> obvious that you intend to go on doing it this way.
>
> DG: Dr Conrad and others have criticized the way I translate many times. As
> you can deduce, there is a night and day difference between the grammar in
> my posts verses the grammar in my translations. I am very cognizant of the
> fact that my translations sound like pidgin English and that the grammar is
> tortured. I know my translations sound idiosyncratic. And I know it rubs
> many of you the wrong way - it's not a proper translation - it's
> frustrating to read - I should know better - and all that. I thought that
> the comment of the "forest of trees being equal to the sum of the trees"
> was a very accurate description of my translations. I just want you all to
> know that is the way I read the Greek text. I read it in painfully literal
> way - and I do it on purpose - for a purpose. And the reason is not to get
> people mad at me. And the reason is not to make fun of the text. And (kai)
> the reason is not to insult your intelligence. I do it to emulate Marks
> style, which appears on the surface, at times, to be grotesque. I do it
> because I am writing a book on Mark - that views the imagery of the text as
> a form of stagecraft one would see in a Greek play. The scenes are simple
> and so are the props. You have characters and choruses. The descriptions
> are minimal. The dialogue is easy to remember. My commentaries on the text
> are going to be from a metaphorical viewpoint in the style of Friedrich
> Weinreb who wrote Roots of the Bible. The grotesque grammar is not to be
> corrected. The translation is to be as wooden as I can render it. That's
> where the "carpentry" begins. That's what joining this list is all about. I
> don't want any mistakes in my translation. I want my translations to look
> like raw lumber - and out of that lumber I will build the commentary on the
> "play." It's all about visual stagecraft puns.
>
> So, in closing, I just want to let you all know I am not mad or upset. I'm
> not interested in defending my translations, my take on the text, my
> incorrect grammar, winning anyone over to my point of view, or anything
> like that. I just want to ask some simple questions about how to literally
> translate the text. I thought that doing it through the buffer of a
> standard English bible translation might be the best policy to keep
> everyone happy.
>
> Dan Gleason
>
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