Fw: all punctuation secondary

From: Perry L. Stepp (plstepp@flash.net)
Date: Fri Apr 03 1998 - 12:12:15 EST


I accidentally sent this message, intended for the group, to only a single
recipient. Here I am posting it to the group.

----------
> From: Perry L. Stepp <plstepp@flash.net>
> To: Steven Cox <scox@ns1.chinaonline.com.cn.net>
> Subject: Re: all punctuation secondary
> Date: Friday, April 03, 1998 9:02 AM
>
> Hello, all.
>
> David Balch and others have done research that shows that at some point
> before the common era, written Greek *did* use both punctuation and
breaks
> between words, and that these customs somehow fell out of use at some
point
> (if I remember correctly) around 200 BC.
>
> Is anyone else familiar with this research? All I remember is a paper
Dr.
> Balch read at the SBL regional in Dallas a few years ago--and I was only
> there for part of his presentation.
>
> PLStepp
>
> ----------
> > From: Steven Cox <scox@ns1.chinaonline.com.cn.net>
> > To: jwest@highland.net; McKay family <music@fl.net.au>
> > Cc: b-greek@virginia.edu
> > Subject: Re: all punctuation secondary
> > Date: Friday, April 03, 1998 7:19 AM
> >
> > Hi Jim
> > Philosophy of translation time?? :-)
> > Sorry to pick up on your pithy mail but I beg to differ.
> >
> > At 06:49 98/04/03 -0500, Jim West wrote:
> > >All punctuation is secondary.
> >
> > I'd certainly agree that in the context of reading a b-Gk
> > text and understanding it in b-gk it is at least tertiary.
> >
> > However in rendering into English why should punctuation
> > be secondary? Punctuation is simply one of the dimensions
> > of expression available to the translator that compensate

> > for having lost such dimensions as case inflection.
> >
> > One could argue that English folk don't use punctuation when
> > they speak so it must be secondary defacto, but spoken
> > and written English are not the same thing and in the
> > latter different mechanisms prevent ambiguity - of which
> > punctuation is one of the most basic - and therefore a
> > part and parcel of the finished translation as much as
> > the lexical and syntactical choices.
> >
> > >Therefore, all punctuation is tendentious and tenuous and theological.
> >
> > Let's admit that every facet of all translation of religious
> > texts has the *potential* to become tendentious and tenuous and
> > theological :-(
> >
> > Shalom
> > Steven
> >



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