[B-Greek] Death by categories

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Mar 5 12:44:23 EST 2009


On Mar 5, 2009, at 11:29 AM, James Spinti wrote:

> A very nice post by Rick Brannon about translation and categories  
> for cases. A short snippet to whet your appetite:
>
> But all of that stymies me. I'm really supposed to know (and  
> recall?) all that hooey before I can translate ὁρκίζω σε  
> τὸν θεόν as "I implore you by God"? The label doesn't help me  
> understand the Greek any better, it gives one shorthand to English  
> it (lemma + parsing/declension + force labels == English  
> translation). Actually, I may even be understanding the Greek less  
> because I'm relying on the label to tell me how to English something  
> instead of actually understanding the Greek itself. Doesn't the  
> occurrence of ορκιζω along with the double accusative (σε +  
> τον θεον) clue me in to something different going on without  
> having to label the blasted thing "accusative of oath"?
> --
> The whole post is here:
> http://www.supakoo.com/rick/ricoblog/2009/03/03/IReallyDontLikeCategories.aspx
> Or, TinyURL:
> http://tinyurl.com/caune9

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Before long now the software will take care of it  
all for us, including translation, once we get the algorithms all  
figured out -- sometime about the middle of next year -- and then the  
only persons needing actually to KNOW Biblical Greek will be the  
people who program the software for us, assuming that we trust them to  
do all of our thinking for us.

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






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