[B-Greek] interlinears
Wayne Leman
wayne_leman at sil.org
Tue Dec 19 17:18:05 EST 2006
> Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>> On Dec 19, 2006, at 12:21 PM, Jim West wrote:
>>
>>> Interlinears will cripple you.
>>
>> It would appear that SIL does not agree. They make extensive use of
>> interlinear text with parsing included in thier publications for
>> translators. I find this annoying and would rather see the Greek and
>> Hebrew presented alone but the target audience for these publications
>> includes people who have little or now background in the ancient
>> languages.
>>
>
> What are people doing translating biblical texts if they have no
> familiarity with biblical languages? And why would such be encouraged
> by an organization devoted to linguistics?
>
> The "translators" you mention aren't translating at all, they are
> producing paraphrases of biblical texts from their own language.
Jim, I'm not sure if this is the best forum to discuss this, but many
(perhaps most) translators these days are third world national translators
who are native speakers of the languages into which they are translating.
They often lack Bible school or seminary training, let alone training in the
biblical languages. If the job of translating for the Bibleless peoples of
the world is ever going to get done, it will increasingly have to be done by
such people. There are not enough seminary-trained individuals willing to
help translate the Bible for Bibleless people. And native translation need
to have resources which allow them to know something of what the biblical
language texts mean.
I am a member of SIL. I took every Greek course available to me in Bible
school and university. I would have taken Biblical Hebrew if I could have
squeezed it into my full schedule. My wife and I recently completed 30 years
of work translating the Bible for a tribal group that needed it. I did not
do the translating. Native speakers did. I helped guide them. And I'm
grateful for all the exegetical and biblical language tools available to us.
I am not a fan of interlinears for the reasons often stated on this forum.
But they have a place to help those who need them.
There are yet more than 2000 languages which could use people trained in
Biblical Greek and Hebrew to help get the Bible translated into those
languages. Will you help us promote the need among those who might be able
to help?
Merry Christmas,
Wayne
----
Wayne Leman
Better Bibles Blog:
http://englishbibles.blogspot.com
>
> best
>
> Jim
>
> --
> Jim West, ThD
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list