[B-Greek] Dr. Buth's statement on fluency
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Sat Mar 31 14:34:21 EDT 2007
> --- Kevin Riley <klriley at alphalink.com.au> wrote:
> > ... what is wrong with the
> > more literal "The crowd
> > having seen him/seeing him, they were amazed"? We
> > have participles in
> > English, we know how they work, so why go for a more
> > explicit translation
> > that puts you through this trauma? The participles
> > are one of the things
> > that make the Greek language so wonderful. When you
> > replace them with more
> > explicit phrases you destroy part of the spirit of
> > the language.
>
> Mitch APEKRIQH
> Kevin: This approach is something I can get from
> reading an English translation. After reading my
> English translations, I feel like I have the 'general'
> sense of a passage. What I'm looking for in the Greek
> is the "deep structure" or the nuances that English
> translations do not capture. To read the participle as
> you suggest, at least as far as I can see, would
> direct me toward a more English understanding. Sounds
> like to me I'm not understanding the idea of
> "fluency." By fluency, I just want to be autonomous,
> not dependent upon another scholar to set me straight.
> I don't see how speaking Koine would help me in that respect.
May I suggest a different perspective?
1. Sometimes greater precision in a language is being able to see
where a translation may have added extra "precision" for the sake of
the target language. Your example with adding qualifiers to the
participle would fall into this category. Greeks did not think through
'while', 'because', ktl. When they needed to mark the relationship
clearly, then they used an appropriate connector word.
2. Different languages place different value and structure on pieces
of a communication. In the example you cited, you should
feel/recognize that the participle is a demoting of communicative
prominence in comparison to the finite verb in Greek.
3. To say that you do not want fluency or to be able to think in/with
the language, is a valid choice for a language whose literature you do
not care to study in depth. Graduate students in Semitic languages
usually need to read articles in German, French, and English, but they
do not often need to control each of those three to a fluent level.
[[Ironically, they often control those languages to a higher level
than the languages of academic interest, but that is another matter.]]
If you ever have the experience of doing 'Language X for Reading', and
afterwards are able to learn to use language X at normal communication
speeds, you will notice a significant, quantum upgrade in your
understanding and in what you are able to do with the language. You
will be able to read at a higher level, paying attention to details,
threads, purposes, and word choice that you could not do when reading
at a slower pace and looking up lots of words for English glosses.
That is why German literature majors at major universities are not
given the option of doing "German for reading only". The program
designers know better, even if a student might object. Some schools
even set up German dorms where the students are required to use German
during certain times.
An unspoken question that I cannot answer is the following:
"If fluency is an important ingredient in high level work in a
language/literature, then why haven't NT people already instituted
this?" Excellent question, though there is no answer other than an
embarrassing silence. [PS: this is not anybody's fault, it's a
collective embarassment.]
A parable that I often share, though I don't know if I've done it on
the list before in exactly this form:
If a muslim scholar from Indonesia meets a muslim scholar from Paris,
they will be able to speak to each other in Arabic, (at least
classical/fusHa).
If a rabbinic scholar from Italy meets a rabbinic scholar from
Lithuania, they will be able to speak to each other in Hebrew. (NB:
This has been true for the 1700 years when Hebrew was only a second
language, too.)
If a Christian scholar from Germany meets a Christian scholar from
Mexico City, they will not be able to communicate in Koine Greek, nor
Hebrew, but probably English.
O MUQOS DHLOI 'the moral of the story' is:
These situations are a factor of a community's commitment to train
their scholars in the original language of their canonical texts.
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
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