[B-Greek] Translating Participles

Kenneth Litwak javajedi2 at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 16 02:32:11 EST 2008


  I've now consulting five or so beginning grammars on translating participles because of a difference between the grammars that may only have significance in English but that's where students are.  

  The issue is what helping verbs/words to use with a given tense.
Depending upon which grammar I use, I could translate PROSELQWN APEKULISEN "After coming to (the tomb) he/she/it rolled away' or "having come to (the tomb) he/she/it rolled away" or "when he had come to (the tomb) he rolled away".  If I use "having" as some grammars do, then this could be confused by students with the perfect participle, which I might translate the same way.

Mark 1:4 KAI KHRUSSWN BAPTISMA could be "and preaching a baptism," "and while preaching a baptism," "and while he was preaching a baptism," or even "and he was preaching."  In one grammar, "was" would not be used for a present active participle but for an aorist active participle.  In another grammar, "was/were" could be used for a present active participle and "have/has/having" for an aorist while in another "have/has/having" would be reserved for a perfect active participle.  I learned to use "having" for the aorist, not only the participle but sometimes even the aorist indicative if that made sense in English.  I recognize that the most important thing is whether the action is contemporary with, prior to or future to the action of the main verb but we still need to know what words to use to convey that as umambiguously in English as possible. I would like to be able to say to my students something like, "You can use 'was/were' with a present
 participle and 'have/has/having with an aorist or perfect participle" or some other variation but they need some guidance as to what is correct and when I'm seeing grammars disagree with each other, it's hard to give advice that is very helpful unless I just say "You're using Mounce.  Do what he says. Period."  That to me, however, is not the way to learn a language.  In fact, at the risk of challenging my own question here, I recently heard a comment to the effect that the entire Zondervan approach to learning languages was a problem in that it presumed you could have a lot more precision than was warranted. I certainly see that.  Translation has a lot of art to it, but at the same time, there would certainly have been some sense of distinction in the minds of Greek speakers, even if we can't know what that was exactly.  

  I'd like to be able to create a chart for my students of translation choices for the different tenses, but right now, I don't think I can constrain those choices very much.  Suggestions?  Thanks.

Ken  
  


      



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