[B-Greek] grammar-translation
Jeffrey T. Requadt
jeffreyrequadt_list at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 4 13:37:13 EDT 2009
I think Will brings up a good point, but I would say that it betrays a
misunderstanding common to many of us--that what we have learned is
translation, and now we want a heck of a lot more (and for future students
as well). The misunderstanding is that we thought we were actually doing
translation. I'm not trying to get into a debate about translation
philosophies, but I'm pretty sure from what I've heard from different
list-members over the years is that translation is far more involved than
simply taking a Greek word/phrase/idiom/tense/morphology and finding the
appropriate form/vocab in a target language (English). The word
"translation" has been used so much to refer to this, but having been
acquainted with actual Bible translators, I think it is a misnomer in all
but the most generic sense. Real translation can never be "mere"
translation. I think what Will is referring to here is the really "mere
Anglicization," or "mere glossing" or something like that--as Carl Conrad
called it, "use the glosses to convert to woodenly-literal English." I think
we need to stop calling that translation, which is a much higher level of
thinking and comprehension in both languages, and often makes use of two or
more other languages in order to compare then meanings that the reader would
construct from the target translation. I think this "mere translation"
mentality is also based on the false notion that if we could get all the
glosses right, we would somehow know what the Greek is saying. It's as if
"comprehension" is made equal to "thinking of what it would be in English."
And I think, we already know what it would be (or at least a good range of
options would be) in English, because that's what other people have created
translations for. So why are Bible college and seminary students wasting
their time learning to reproduce what has already been done over and over
for them, when what they're doing won't help their own comprehension?
But none of that is answering Will's question. My own limited experience
with learning a foreign language (French) and my parents learning an African
language, tells me that it comes from almost forcing yourself to not think
in English. For example, my mother would learn Shempire words by looking at
picture cards that someone had made for her and saying the word in Shempire.
This would help her to get past what Will is talking about--seeing a picture
of a chicken, and thinking "chicken" in English, and then trying to say the
word in Shempire. She really wanted to see the picture and think the word in
Shempire with automaticity, without having to think of what thing was in
English (or French) first.
Maybe this is an example of why oral/aural methods of learning a
language--even an ancient, dead language--can help you to actually think in
that language, rather than always trying to think of what it would be in
English. There's a great C.S. Lewis quote from his autobiography, "Surprised
by Joy" that I had the fortune to read last summer, about his method of
learning classical Greek (it's quoted in B-Greek at
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2007-June/043358.html):
"We opened our books at Iliad, Book 1. Without a word of
introduction Knock read aloud the first twenty lines or so in the
"new" pronunciation, which I had never heard before....He then
translated, with a few, a very few explanations, about a hundred
lines. I had never seen a classical author taken in such large gulps
before. When he had finished he handed me over Crusius' Lexicon and,
having told me to go through again as much as he had done, left the
room. It seems an odd method of teaching, but it worked. At first I
could travel only a very short way along the trail he had blazed, but
every day I could travel further. Presently I could travel the whole
way. Then I could go a line or two beyond his furthest North. Then it
became a kind of game to see how far beyond. He appeared at this
stage to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The great gain was
that I very soon became able to understand a great deal without (even
mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is
the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom
the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the
lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not
reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very
formula, "Naus means a ship," is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a
thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or
naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or
oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding."
What is interesting to me is that Lewis's tutor could translate so much at
once, but the translation was not the point. But the way he got through it
was by struggling and spending a lot of time with real text, but not picking
apart every word to find an infinite number of details--he was making sense
out of the whole (I wonder what he would think of Randall Buth's
materials?). Stories like this one are why I posed my question a little
while back about what literature would be especially good for someone to
dive into and surround themselves with Greek in order to struggle and spend
lots and lots of time thinking about what the Greek means, not trying to
crack the Greek code.
Jeffrey T. Requadt
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Will Dilbeck
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 9:28 AM
To: Carl Conrad
Cc: greek B-Greek
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] grammar-translation
I have observed from afar the much discussed idea of reading/thinking in
Greek vs. mere translation. I clearly want to get to the point beyond
translation. However, it is difficult for me to see how this is achieved
considering that when I see for example "BLEPW" in a given text, I convert
it to an idea which is expressed to me in English as "I see." Perhaps this
is not a good example, but I hope you can see my point. I guess my question
is a simple one, "Pragmatically, how can I go from translation to
reading/thinking in Greek?"
Thanks,
Will
On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 4, 2009, at 10:59 AM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>
> >
> > Last night I had an opportunity to view samples of the DVDs from D.A.
> > Black's intro class. I watched portions of the first session and
> > portions of session 24 on the imperative . I know know why this method
> > of teaching is called grammar-translation. Transaltion is a central
> > feature of the discussion. Every thing is explained by looking at
> > translation alternatives. I had never see this method in action
> > before. Well perhaps I have, once. I think a while back I watched
> > something by Mounce on his web site.
>
> It is ,alas -- my reaction, shared, I suspect by very few --, the
> wave of the future in Biblical Greek pedagogy -- less so in Classical
> Greek pedagogy. There is no pretense of such fool notions as "thinking
> in Greek." Rather, it is: Parse, decode, and use the glosses to
> convert to woodenly-literal English, somewhat like an attempt to
> describe the taste of a cucumber or broccoli that one has only
> sniffed. Granted, this is a gross exaggeration, but there is, I think,
> more than a little truth in it.
>
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
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