[B-Greek] Mark 12:41-44

Webb webb at selftest.net
Wed Jan 25 22:25:17 EST 2006


I think your rendition would benefit from a few changes. 


And having sat opposite the treasury 

(OK)

 

He was watching how the crowd casts copper into the treasury.  

(1. "the crowd casts". In English it has to be "how the crowd cast", or,
better, "how the crowd put". First of all, you have to have concord between
the tense of the verb for watching and the verb expressing the action being
watched. Otherwise it's ungrammatical. Second, the Greek word BALLW means
lots of things, including throwing, casting and putting, but in English, you
don't cast money in a contribution box, you put it in there. The word "cast"
suggests that they threw it, and that is not implied by the Greek. 3. In
Greek, CALKOS, when talking about money, is a collective plural-like the
words "fish" and "sheep" in English. That's why it says they put in POLLA,
"many". A lot of coins, not necessarily literally copper ones. CALKOS just
connotes money in general, and since there was no paper money in
circulation, we're talking about copper, silver, and gold.)

 

And many rich men were casting much;

 

(I'd suggest "putting [in] a lot", since that is ambiguous as to whether it
refers to a plural or singular object. "Casting much copper" means nothing
to a modern English speaker.)

 

and having come one poor widow cast two leptons, which is a quadrans.

 

(This would be OK if you footnote it to explain what these denominations of
coins mean. Otherwise you haven't translated it at all.)

 

And having called forth the disciples of Him He said to them:

 

(This reads as though it has been copied and pasted from an interlinear. You
can't get grammatical English by doing that. You need "his disciples", not
"the disciples of him".)



"Amen I say to you 

 

(Amen is a problem word. To a pure non-Christian (or non-Jew or non-Muslim)
it means nothing; to a Christian or a person vaguely familiar with
Christianity, it means "here ends the prayer", or "I agree with what he/she
said". It does not work to drop it into English just as it is in the
Greek-that means that it is left untranslated.) 

 

 

that this poor widow cast more than all of the ones who cast into the
treasury; for all cast out of the things that abound to them, 

 

(OK, except I recommend "put")

 

 

but she herself cast the whole life of her all things whatsoever she had out
of the lack of her."

(Once again, this reads as though it has been copied and pasted from an
interlinear. It's impossible to read as English. If the end result of your
work is not understandable in English, you have not yet completely
translated it into English.) 

 

Best Wishes,

Webb Mealy




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