[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




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