[B-Greek] reading for translation or understanding?

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Feb 3 07:01:38 EST 2008


On Feb 2, 2008, at 11:29 PM, Jeffrey T. Requadt wrote:

> 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?

It's a good question. One thought that occurs to me is that Al  
Pietersma has explained the woodenness of LXX versions of the Hebrew  
Bible through the likeness of an "interlinear" translation and  
suggests that it's a schoolboy sort of exercise in translation, the  
endeavor being to reproduce the structure of the original in what some  
call "formal equivalence" as opposed to "dynamic equivalence." I  
wonder, however, whether it may perhaps be a matter of reverence for  
the text governing the readiness to be creative in the effort to  
express the full meaning of the original -- as if it were the FORM of  
the original, even more than (or at least as much as) the CONTENT,  
that the translator feels obliged to carry over into the target  
language. By and large, it strikes me that the Latin of the Vulgate NT  
is more or less comparable to the Greek of the LXX OT with respect to  
"wooden" literalness.

I think it's different when a poet translates a poet, as Livius  
Andronicus turns Odyssey 1.1
ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον ...
ANDRA MOI ENNEPE, MOUSA, POLUTROPON ...
into
VIRUM MIHI, CAMENA, INSECE VERSUTUM
-- where the word-order is closely approximated, but lexically  
speaking VIRUM is not quite the same as ἄνδρα (ANDRA) and  
VERSUTUM, while retaining something of the sense implicit in the  
nominal suffix -τροπον (-TROPON) in the adjective  
πολύτροπον (POLUTROPON), far better captures the rich sense  
of the adjective than something more literal like "much-turned."

Or consider what Catullus does with Sappho:

φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν'  ὠνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι
ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φωνεί-
       σας ὐπακούει
FAINETAI MOI KHNOS ISOS QEOISIN
EMMEN' WNHR, OTTIS ENANTIOS TOI
ISDANEI KAI PLASION ADU FWNEI-
      SAS UPAKOUEIN

Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
      spectat et audit

Catullus preserves the metrical scheme of the original precisely, but  
transforms the sense of the original radically with several very  
distinctive touches. I'm inclined to think that the same is true when  
Romans translated Greek prose. This probably deserves considerably  
more study to evaluate the probability of this supposition, but I'm  
really wondering whether reverence for the Biblical text doesn't  
contribute a great deal to the feeling (perhaps especially in a new  
learner of Greek or Hebrew) that the words and the order of the  
original ought, if possible, to be reflected in the translation.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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