[B-Greek] reading for translation or understanding?

Jeffrey T. Requadt jeffreyrequadt_online at hotmail.com
Sat Feb 2 23:29:57 EST 2008


I know that a very common discussion on this list is when someone asks, “I’m reading such-and-such a book/passage/verse, and I’m having difficulty translating this phrase.” Or they ask, “How much vocab do you need to be able to translate as you go along?” or some other question about translating. And some people respond to their question by offering some solutions, while others respond that the focus should be on understanding, not translating, and that translation is a topic for another list. And after hearing this cycle over and over, I’ve started to wonder… when did there start to be such an emphasis on “translation”? I agree that the focus should be on understanding, not because I have any expertise in teaching classical languages, but because of my background with parents who are linguists and translators, and because as a teacher I focus reading on having meaning, so when you read you’re not getting stuck on words but are understanding implicitly as you go along, visualizing, making connections, predictions, asking questions, etc., not figuring out what the words are—although sometimes you have to. And even then, there are several options available, such as rereading, reading on, deciding whether it’s important or not, trying another word that you know would make sense in the sentence—no matter what you do, the purpose is to understand the meaning of the text, not to translate it or uncover every nuance of every word. And so I try to have the same mentality when reading NT Greek (although my vocab is indeed limited, since I’m not actively trying to build it)—i.e., reading Greek to UNDERSTAND what it means, just like I read French to UNDERSTAND what it means, just like I read English to UNDERSTAND what it means. And even though I’m fairly proficient in French, when I was learning to read it I wasn’t using French-English dictionaries just to figure out how to translate it into English… I was reading it to UNDERSTAND what it meant. So my question is, when did there get to be such an emphasis on translation, so that people keep thinking that that’s the purpose of reading the GNT? When did seminaries get away from teaching Greek in order to understand the New Testament/Septuagint to teaching Greek in order to translate the New Testament? In addition, I keep getting the feeling that a lot of the “this is what the Greek REALLY means, or this is what the Greek word ALSO means” that I hear in sermons (just heard another one last Sunday) comes from the preacher thinking that his use of a lexicon somehow is more authentic than the English translation his listeners are reading from (and from which he is presumably preaching in the first place). So again, where did this emphasis on “translation” come from? Or has this always been the focus, and I just missed it somewhere?

 

Jeffrey T. Requadt

Dietz Elementary

(520) 731-4000

 

"IATBILA: I'm A Teacher Because I Like Acronyms." ~ Jeff Requadt

 

 




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