[B-Greek] reading for translation or understanding?

Eric Inman eric.inman at wescorpflex.com
Sun Feb 3 09:11:32 EST 2008


I think that's a very good point about reverence for the text possibly
explaining why some translations are so wooden and literal.

I have actually felt that wooden, literal translations might actually have
some value in certain circumstances for another reason. When reading the
different books of the GNT from different authors, settings, places and
times, you find yourself in different landscapes of vocabulary, syntax,
style, etc. These differences seem to get blurred or lost in translation.
This seems especially true from the standpoint that texts from several
different snapshots of Greek in its evolution as a language are translated
into a single snapshot of English in its evolution as a language. I have
often wondered if a minimal, strictly consistent (what I would call partial)
translation into "translation English" might produce a text which would have
some value to people wanting to be more aware of these shifts in style,
vocabulary usage, etc.

Eric Inman

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Carl Conrad
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 6:02 AM
To: Jeffrey T. Requadt
Cc: B-Greek B-Greek
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] reading for translation or understanding?


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  
...
> 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.

...

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



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