[B-Greek] my wooden interlinear translations

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Mon Nov 7 09:30:43 EST 2005


On Nov 7, 2005, at 8:15 AM, Eric Weiss wrote:

>> "To translate is not to put the words of one language into another:
>> it is to express the meaning of the words in another language".
>
> All well and good if there is a single or clear meaning in the  
> original text. One point argued by
> the gender-neutral dissenters is that the use of male pronouns in,  
> e.g., the Psalms could very
> well be messianic in meaning. I.e., they point to a MAN, and not  
> just a "person" or "human
> being," and hence to render ADAM or ISH as "human being(s)" or  
> "person(s)" may be to read
> out some of the meaning of the original. Also, as Moule points out  
> in his idiom book, there are
> NT examples of possible double-meanings in some passages - e.g.,  
> Paul speaking of our
> present light affliction working for us an eternal weight of glory  
> - "weight" and "glory" being 2
> words in the Greek, but a single word in the Hebrew that may have  
> been a deliberate play on
> words in the Apostle's mind. And then you have Moises Silva's essay  
> in THE CHALLENGE OF
> BIBLE TRANSLATION where he describes the agony he went through  
> trying to convey in
> English something straightforwardly written in his native Spanish.  
> Why the agony? Because he
> was aware of all the nuances in the Spanish original that were lost  
> with every English phrase
> he attempted. "The Translator as Traitor?" I believe he entitled  
> his essay.
>
> (Note: I am not disagreeing with your "rule" at all; it's in fact  
> what I try to convey to those who
> let me teach them Greek. I.e., "How would you say this IN ENGLISH?")

Amen -- hermeneutics bears heavily on interpretation and therefore on  
how one conveys what one supposes is meant by the original author --  
that of course is something that we deliberately steer clear of on B- 
Greek.

The title of that article derives from an old Italian proverb:  
TRADUTTORI TRADITORI: "translators are traitors."


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




More information about the B-Greek mailing list