[B-Greek] grammar, style, and how to translate them
Ted & Robin Shoemaker
shoes6 at juno.com
Fri May 20 09:18:55 EDT 2011
My son had an interesting question the other day.
The grammar of the Bible is not uniform. Neither are its writing styles. I don't know about Hebrew or Aramaic, but for Greek:
Mark is the nonstandard grammar of the uneducated "rough-and-ready" working class;
Luke's writing is polished and beautiful;
John shows semitic influence;
etc.
So --
Is there any way of bringing those subtleties into the translated languages, or are they forever locked in the original languages only? As things stand, the entire Bible is "smoothed out" into a consistent English style, more dependent on the translator's bent than those of the original writers. In other words, it's de-flavorized.
Consider as illustration some non-biblical documents written originally in English: Huckleberry Finn, and Romeo and Juliet, for two examples. The peculiar grammar used in Huckleberry Finn adds color to the book. Imagine re-writing Romeo and Juliet in Huck Finn's dialect; and vice versa. (If English is not your first language, and you don't know what I'm talking about, please ask off-list.)
So grammar and style do make a difference.
And for those of us to whom every word of the Bible is important, it makes a big difference.
I answered my son by saying that it would be hard to translate "bad grammar" into English without taking on an unintended English dialect, i.e. imitating a particular English-speaking subculture. Neither he nor I were satisfied with my answer.
Obviously, parts of this question are beyond the boundaries of b-Greek. If you wish to discuss those parts of the topic, please do so off-list. But on this list, we can, I hope, have a good discussion about styles and grammar, and especially about how to deal with them.
What do you think?
Ted Shoemaker
Success is easy only if you're a weeds farmer.
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