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Source: (consider it) Thread: How literal can/should a translation be?
IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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I came across this interesting video (tip of the hat to Catholic Bibles Blog). Please note that the video plugs a book at the very end, so it is a kind of infomercial. However, I have not read that book and cannot comment on it. The video is however indeed informative in its own right.

The basic points made by the presenter (author) are that our usual distinction into more "literal" and more "dynamic" translations (1) does not really hold true consistently for the English translations on the market, (2) is not an accurate reflection of the task translators face, and (3) does not capture at all the situation when dealing with languages further removed from the Indo-European language group.

This leads to the question just how literal one can/should make a translation of scripture, both in a technical sense (what is achievable) and in a pragmatic sense (what is useful). In particular, there seems to be a trend to evaluate "more literal" as "more true" and "less literal" as "more accessible". Is that really the case?

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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I agree that the categories 'literal / formal' and 'dynamic' are not very helpful now when it comes to translation. The same can be said for other terms that have been used, such as 'paraphrase'. These terms were useful in the days when the activity of bible translation took place in a context (in English, at any rate) where one translation (KJV) held considerable sway in the culture and everything else was considered to be a reaction to it.

Since the 1960s some considerable work has been done in the field of translation theory, drawing on insights from the wider discipline of linguistics. The really interesting insights, to me at any rate, have come from studies in the area of metaphor, where all language is seen as being more or less metaphorical and where translation work investigates the original language in its rhetorical and pictorial context, before rendering into equivalents that hold the metaphor faithfully and safely.

A true translation would not, then, seek to engage with a text at the word (literal) level, but neither would it seek to engage the reader on terms that reader would understand without blinking (often understood to be the outcome of dynamic equivalents), but would for example shock the modern reader in the same way that the original audience would have been shocked when shock was intended by the author. This of course applies to a translation activity in any language, not just English.

The downside of this approach is that metaphors die when the 'shock' element dies off. One has to keep translating and updating the translation output to maintain the intended impact on the audience that the author originally had. Such is life! The earth is cursed with the need to maintain tilling, and communication is cursed with a similar need.

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Alan Cresswell

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The other downside of that approach is that it's relatively easy to transliterate between languages, replace words with nearest equivalent and then giggle the grammar, but making sure you understand the intent and meaning of the original author is much, much harder.

In a totally different context, a few weeks ago I was at a party where the conversation moved to translating Alice in Wonderland into Ukrainian - I should say, if it's not obvious, that the party included a linguist and a Ukrainian who mentioned she'd read Lewis Carroll at school in English lessons and in the Ukrainian translation. Just how do you translate a phrase like "Curiouser and curiouser" which is intentionally grammatically incorrect? (It turns out, that for the particular Ukrainian given that task, is to resort to archaic language forms that are unnatural to modern Ukrainians).

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tclune
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Interesting video. I would note that he doesn't even bring up the equally thorny question of textual criticism. I have said before how much I like the NET Bible, which has voluminous notes on both textual criticism and translation issues. ISTM that the NET Bible pushes these concerns far enough that it shows the way to a completely different approach to translation -- instead of finding the right word or phrase to render a scriptural passage into English, we need to provide enough context for the reader to recognize the many nuances that the translator can't render into a simple English sentence. What an ideal translation would do is give us the insight into the passage that a translator has. I think that's exactly what the NET Bible tries to achieve [although they do have some editions which forego most of the footnotes, which strikes me as just plain weird]. Where necessary, there are paragraphs of footnotes on a single word or idea, helping us come to grips with the text that lies beyond those of us who are not translators.

--Tom Clune

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HCH
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This discussion might benefit from specific examples.
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Nigel M
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I came across one example of a focus on metaphor in a blog by John Hobbins.

The comments following the blog demonstrate that this approach to translation is also constrained by the speech-type (e.g., dialect, 'group-speak', slang...) of the intended audience. What works for one audience type will not necessarily work for another.

That said, and even also taking into account the hard work referred to by Alan Cresswell, it is the only viable kid on the block to get at the bible in context.

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IngoB

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First, there are a good number of examples in the video I linked to.

Second, I don't like the metaphor example from that blog. Not one tiny bit. Now, admittedly I'm not a native speaker of English. But my English isn't all that bad, and when I have to reach for a dictionary to make some sense of a translation then I'm guessing it is not a particularly good translation. To put that differently, I doubt that Qohelet's usage of הֶבֶל would have been similarly confusing to a non-native but reasonably competent speaker of Hebrew in his days.

In fact, the attitude on display in the blog
quote:
It is not better to translate הבל, Q’s master-metaphor, with a non-metaphor, such as “absurd” (Michael Fox). Abstractions are pitiful substitutes for metaphors.
is no better than the attitude that the only good translation is a "word for word" one. Also metaphors are not "sacred", it is not the case that a translation must be "metaphor for metaphor" come what may. Metaphors are a communication tool. If in a different language a different communication tool works better for achieving a similar mental change in the listener, then a translation should use that other tool!

I agree that the "word for word" translation from Robert Alter "Merest breath, said Qohelet, merest breath. All is mere breath." does not really work. It does not convey the intended meaning to me in English. But neither does the blog writer's "A perfect crock, said the Philosopher, a perfect crock - It’s all a crock." Or at least it certainly doesn't work for me without the aid of a dictionary (and as mentioned above, I think it probably should). Whereas the quoted NLT "Everything is meaningless, says the Teacher, utterly meaningless." gets the job done. And if one wants to capture the more "poetic" approach of using metaphor in Hebrew, then one does not necessarily have to find a more functional metaphor than "crock". For example, the RSV (following the KJV) gets the job done like the NLT, but by word choice sounds more poetic: "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity." Though this also relies on a perhaps now too rare meaning of the word "vanity" in English (which I happen to understand as non-native speaker). The REB has instead “Futility, utter futility, says the Speaker, everything is futile.” That to me hits just about the right spot, in particular in view of the next verse ("What does anybody profit from all his labour and toil here under the sun?" REB).

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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anteater

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Of the examples mentioned by Ingo in the video the one that quite surprised me was that of Job's wife telling him to "Curse God and die" whereas the actual word is BARACH which is the normal word for bless. So "literally" she told Job to "Bless God and die".

The translators presumably know that it was a euphemism, but how? And do they consistently re-render euphemisms, like the cherubim covering their feet (= genitals)?

Personally I would have preferred "bless God and die" with a footnote.

Ingo's discussion of (to quote another) "evanescence of evanescences" raises the question as to literary style, and whether that is a factor. "Vanity of vanities" is the only one that doesn't sound clunky to me, although in this case the literal "merest breath" is quite good. The trouble with "crock" is that to an english speaker of a certain degree of vulgarity, crock is simply short for "crock of shit" which gets the meaning across but would hardly do as a translation.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Of the examples mentioned by Ingo in the video the one that quite surprised me was that of Job's wife telling him to "Curse God and die" whereas the actual word is BARACH which is the normal word for bless. So "literally" she told Job to "Bless God and die". The translators presumably know that it was a euphemism, but how?

Indeed, I had exactly the same question when I heard that! But I think the context does suggest the euphemism: "Then his wife said to him, 'Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God, and die.'" Basically, if Job blessed God (and then died), he would have hold fast his integrity. Since the wife is clearly suggesting to Job to let go of his integrity under the circumstances, it likely follows that she meant cursing God here.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Ingo's discussion of (to quote another) "evanescence of evanescences" raises the question as to literary style, and whether that is a factor. "Vanity of vanities" is the only one that doesn't sound clunky to me, although in this case the literal "merest breath" is quite good. The trouble with "crock" is that to an english speaker of a certain degree of vulgarity, crock is simply short for "crock of shit" which gets the meaning across but would hardly do as a translation.

I don't think that "merest breath" is particularly good. It works for us, because we already know what the meaning here is supposed to be. But if we had never heard of Qohelet, we would likely struggle finding the correct meaning from that.

Taken in isolation "Merest breath, said Qohelet, merest breath. All is mere breath." doesn't really say much to me. I would perhaps guess that I'm listening to Yoga / meditation instructions there... I then really do need the context, and quite a bit of it, to guess at a more appropriate interpretation of this.

Although now that I say that, I note that the "breath" metaphor nicely plays into the cyclical coming and going that is described in the following as well. So how about this for a translation attempt:

"Fleeting as breath, said the Speaker, fleeting as breath. Everything is just huff and puff."

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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Glad to find that the metaphor idea shocks!

In Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) it is true that the word “crock” will only work for those who hear that word with the same impact as it had on the author's original audience; as I said earlier, this is one of the reasons why translation activity will have become hard work – the impact is the aim and this means choosing the terminology that achieves the same impact for specific audiences. “Crock” only works for those who react in the same way to the text as the audience in Qoheleth's setting reacted. I admit that “crock” isn't a word that would have occurred to me to use (not being a north American), though now being reminded of the “crock of shit” picture I see that this would actually work in the context. I'll explain further below. Aren’t Brits engagingly endearing in their use of language?

I should also state the obvious: the focus is not only on the individual words that need to be used, but also on the word that is used in the co-text of other words that belong to the same communication.

Interestingly it is the oral setting that works better in translation activity for this. Once a metaphor is written – and particularly where it is disseminated as part of the sacred text – it becomes trapped in time. It is also the case that translators of sacred texts for sacred communities will inevitably default to the common denominator to ensure the widest possible acceptance. Words that are too specific will generate the same reaction as on this thread, hence the resort to words such as “meaningless”. That word carries wider acceptance, but it does so at the loss of impact.

How so? Well, I've got some time off work this week, which gives me the opportunity to delve into a text, so here's my take on how this process could work. I probably need to set out the approach background first.

Starting Principle
The only viable starting point for interpretation is that of authorial intention. This is defined as 'The effect an author intended to have on an audience to affect change in reaction to a problem, by using the words he used in the way he used them'.

Authorial Intention is capable of being validated in the public sphere because it uses publicly available evidence (the text).

Supporting evidence
Authors write from within the bubble of their worldviews (= essentially the basic way of interpreting things and events that pervade a culture so thoroughly that it becomes a culture's concept of reality). Knowledge of the overarching worldview that informs their thinking as expressed in their texts assists in getting out of one's own shoes and into the shoes of the author.

Understanding of this wider context to a writing is supported by findings available from archaeology, sociology and linguistics.

So on to Ecclesiastes...

The Text
I'm going jump ahead here and leapfrog (metaphors, metaphors, metaphors...) the work of textual criticism – the time isn't that generous! I'll take the second verse of Ecclesiastes chapter one as it appears in the Masoretic Text of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia as the base – it does not appear to have any remotely significant textual variants (this verse has not materialised in the scraps from the Dead Sea Scrolls – 4Q109 being the only survivor from the book).

The Hebrew Text of chapter one can be found here.

The equivalent LXX text (as published by Rahlfs) is here.

Verse one of chapter 1 is a heading, but I don't think there's any doubt that the real opening of the work is verse two.

הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים אָמַר קֹהֶלֶת הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶל

Enough has been written on the poetic element of the verse and how well it works, e.g., use of alliteration where even the title 'Qoheleth' is drafted in support (Havel havalim amar qoheleth | havel havalim haqol havel), something that doesn't carry across as effectively in the Greek version, but how does this verse function in terms of impact?

Worldview
Leaving hostages to fortune here – but happy to explore this further if needed – I'll leap another fence (and glide to use another leaping metaphor in the process) by claiming that the dominant worldview in the ancient near east is that of covenant. This is the reciprocal relationship within a hierarchy that binds people together in an arrangement whereby the senior partner provides stability (peace, well-being, protection, etc.) to the junior, and the junior provides service (tax, labour, etc.) to the senior. This arrangement extended all the way from the individual to his or her family head, from that head to the clan chief, from that chief to the tribal leader, from that leader to the king, from that king to the emperor ('high king'), from the emperor to the relevant god, and from that god to the Supreme God (El). Loyalty (love) was the core link, rebellion (sin) was the threat that introduced chaos.

Important to note that this societal relationship-in-hierarchy was a cultural thing. It was understood, and plays out consciously or unconsciously in the writings of the biblical authors. This worldview should not be confused with covenant as the occasional practical activity referred to in the bible (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic...); these were merely outworkings of something already internalised. Covenant as worldview shaped the way the authors and their audiences modelled the world. It defines all the biblical authors' expressions and is the model from within which authors felt obliged to tackle what they perceived to be threats to the peace that covenant brought. Their communications are reactions to those threats. Something had gone wrong somewhere and an author felt the need to communicate in order to effect a change. He or she did this by constructing a text using the rhetoric to hand, designing the text to affect the audience.

Hevel
It's within all of this that the word hevel (= lb,h&,) appears. Others have referred to how some English versions manage this word. The range of options include: Vanity, Meaningless, Futile, Utterly pointless, Useless... Commentaries and lexicons usually refer to a connotation of 'breath', or 'vapour'.

But is that what it is doing in Ecclesiastes 1:2?

We're given the clue in what follows from 1:4 to 1:7, where the worldview of covenant is expressed in cosmological terms – all is stable, at peace, creation is working as it should, there is well-being. In other words, covenant is working. This is what life looks like when there is loyalty between seniors and juniors all the way up to El.

The shock element is the summary that the author gives in respect of this God-ordained order. It is unutterably tiresome, people just don't accept stable life, they fidget constantly (1:8). God's expectation of his juniors in the covenant relationship of life is unprofitable toil (1:13 – an “evil task”, perhaps a reference to the same idea that comes out of Genesis 3?).

Within this picture – stable covenant life as essentially worthless (a fallout from the 'Fall', perhaps) – hevel is presented in connection with “the wind's will” (1:14 - “Look! It's all hevel! It's what the wind wants!” [weHinneh; hakkol hevel, uRe'uth ruach]). This is paralleled with 1:13b, the “unprofitable toil” and this is Qoheleth's conclusion. The connection with profit, or successful business outcomes in a stable environment (brought on of course by a properly working covenant situation), is repeated later in 2:1 where trying out profitable pleasure is also “Look! It's also havel!” 2:11 then repeats the conclusion on profit, that stable work is profitless, the wind's will.

And so on through the book. The impact the author seems to want to get across is that this stable working environment within what should be the expectations of a working covenant is essentially profitless. The picture being drawn on is of gain from work – wages, outputs and outcomes, something to show from the daily labour. The shock is that this is within the normal state of life, when everything is working well, not from a state when covenant has broken down and chaos rules.

It's possible to go on and see how the author works this out, but hopefully enough is clear to get a feel for the rhetorical style of the author and his use of the metaphor of hevel to build a world in the audience's mind against the backdrop of the shared worldview.

Now within this setting a translator has to decide how best to get the image into an impact. I suggest that “Meaningless” and “Vanity” (and their kith and kin) just don't work here. At best they flatten out the meaning to a lowest common denominator. The point the author is making is not that there is no meaning, or no substance. There is a world of work and toil behind the image, it plays on the heaviness of the business compared with the outcome. We get near with the concept of 'lightness' in much the same way as Genesis 4 plays on Abel (havel / hevel) versus Cain (Qayin) as a heavy weight, but with an emphasis on no-worthy-outcome, no profit.

How this should be expressed in a receptor language will depend on an assessment of the impact. When one unconsciously assumes that what one is doing is in accord with the 'right thing to do', when it is occurring in a stable environment and when “God's in his heaven, all's right with the world”, then one needs a shock to shake one out of the reverie. What might work to represent the realisation that what one has gained from all the work of keeping creation under control is actually not worth very much at all? To a Brit: a crock of shit, perhaps?

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Leaf
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I humbly submit "fart in a windstorm".
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moonlitdoor
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Although I am a native English speaker, I would have had no idea what meaning was intended by the expression 'a perfect crock', so Ingob is not the only one.

Although I am no translator, I am sceptical about the idea of trying to translate the effect the author intended, at least as far as translations of ancient languages go.

If translating a document written today, there are millions of people one can ask what effect English speakers typically intend when using the expression x, and even when translating a 19th century Russian novel, there are very large amounts of documents written at the same time in the same genre which one can compare with. I'm not convinced that is true of the bible, and think that you'll mostly get the intention of the translator rather than that of the author.

It's hard enough to get people to agree on the basic meaning of passages that touch on anything theological or ethically controversial. This approach just seems to make things worse.

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We've evolved to being strange monkeys, but in the next life he'll help us be something more worthwhile - Gwai

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
...I am sceptical about the idea of trying to translate the effect the author intended, at least as far as translations of ancient languages go. ... you'll mostly get the intention of the translator rather than that of the author.

It's certainly true that a translator may simply reflect his or her own image when it comes to the task, but the answer is that translators have to use techniques to ensure they step outside their own worldviews. As I say, it requires stepping into the shoes of the author and his/her time. Archaeology, sociology, and linguistics are three areas where tools are found to do this – especially if all three are used to operate in a system of checks and balances.

After all, there are only three options in interpretation: authorial meaning, textual meaning, reader meaning. These have been batted about in discussions for a good half century or more (though one could go back at least to Aristotle to see how long the issue has been alive). If not authorial meaning, which of the other two would offer better results and why? It's an issue impacting all texts – legal, constitutional, religious, rules of the local golf club... - so the debate has resonances for all humanity.

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IngoB

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Problem is, Nigel, reading your analysis has more or less convinced me that "vanity" or "futility" is a really good way of translating this into English. Precisely so if this is about showing that the regular covenant life with God does not deliver the satisfaction one might expect!

This is simply illustrated. If I say "Everything is shit!" or "Everything is futile!", in which case are your more likely to offer me a beer / hug, and in which case are you more inclined to strike up a philosophical debate? I reckon the former is much more likely to be an explosive expression of anger at some particular circumstance, whereas the latter is much more likely to indicate philosophical ennui.

Now, the Hebrew "breath" as metaphor works, because breath is just something that softly comes and goes. But "shit" is completely different, it immediately evokes strong negative engagement and probably even sensory imagery. It is a bodily product we usually don't want to consider mentally. We may need to add a few more words to bring this to the fore in English, but compare "fleeting like breath" with "fleeting like shit". The latter just doesn't work.

So the abstract nouns "vanity" or "futility" here seem to me to capture succinctly the dissatisfaction with the everyday that you describe. And indeed, I think the bodily metaphor Hebrew uses suggests more a suffocating dissatisfaction than sudden rage. "(Crock of) shit" is something to shout about, but "futility" is something to languish under. I think the latter is much more likely the author's intention.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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moonlitdoor
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quote:

originally posted by NigelM

If not authorial meaning, which of the other two would offer better results and why?

I agree that authorial meaning is best when we can reasonably aim at it but I'd prefer textual meaning where authorial meaning is just a guess. Like I said, I am not an expert but things I've read trying to discern authorial intent in classical Greek texts as well as the New Testament have generally seemed to me extremely tenuous, as though the less there is to go on, the more weight they put on what little there is.

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We've evolved to being strange monkeys, but in the next life he'll help us be something more worthwhile - Gwai

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Nigel M
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Ingo: One of the difficulties we face is that we live in a culture that has absorbed – consciously or not – a degree of Satre, his predecessors, and his successors in the French post-structural debate. I think we come at Ecclesiastes with a memory of someone else's boredom! This means that we risk misunderstanding where the author was at; we may need to be as shocked as his audience would have been in case our response is: “Yes, mate; I agree. Been there, done that.”

moonlitdoor: the issue with textual meaning is that is seems to collapse into the reader's meaning, which rather opens up a free for all. The advantage with authorial meaning is that we have a text that has been constructed in a particular way by a human, which immediately constrains the options in interpretation. Our problem with biblical texts is more one of riches; there is such a vast collection of material to draw on, more than there is for other ancient texts, that we have to rely on textual critics to get us started. Then we have to work at the context. It is hard work, but I have to say that the only other option seems to be the fate of so many bible studies, where we work our way round the circle of attendees who can offer only what they think a particular text means (and which may or may not resonate with others in the group) and who are none the wiser at the end as to which interpretation, if any, comes near a truth. That makes a difference in a community that seeks to understand God and how he wants his people to live. I fear that anything other than authorial intention is a guess.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
This means that we risk misunderstanding where the author was at; we may need to be as shocked as his audience would have been in case our response is: “Yes, mate; I agree. Been there, done that.”

I disagree strongly. If we are not shocked at ennui about life with God, then we are not shocked by it. Period. It is not the role of a translator to somehow compensate for our entire cultural condition. The role of a translation is not to induce an "equivalent appreciation", but rather an "equivalent conception". I'm supposed to get what the author was trying to say, but what I then make of that is not at issue. If I don't understand that the author talks about the futility of a faithful life, then that is a translation problem. If I don't care, then that is a spiritual problem. Spiritual problems are the domain of priests and other spiritual advisors, not of translators.

Obviously the distinction I'm making there will not always be clear cut in practice. But I do think that the distinction must be clear in the intention of the translator.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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I think you are confusing 'meaning' with 'significance'. The translator is concerned with the former, the teacher/preacher with the latter.
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Demas
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Traduttori traditori, as the Italians say.

All of these approaches are inherently tradeoffs. Each gives up something in gaining something else and each compromise can at most be a local maximum.

The future is I think more along the lines of hypermedia clusters of translation options.

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They did not appear very religious; that is, they were not melancholy; and I therefore suspected they had not much piety - Life of Rev John Murray

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Nigel M
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I think you are right – translation activity suits better the oral, perhaps including the short-lived social-media / blog, arena. It's in that sphere that a translator can best align his or her work to a local time-bound audience. The written biblical versions are limited in their scope here. They are not local enough to be effective at both meaning and significance. We have to live with that, but we could work harder at translating into a version that gets the meaning across, so that the local teacher can apply it. Of course I'm sure we can all point to the risk inherent to the oral short-lived approach: translation activity can be a free-for-all and become little more than a 'reader-response' process.

Tom Clune mentioned above the NET Bible version. That might be a way forward, where the principles of translation theory can be practised, the output updated with the results of new findings quite quickly, and notes in support of a translation choice made easily accessible. The NET does a good job, I think, on the way to what this could look like - it is certainly amenable to even more development.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I think you are confusing 'meaning' with 'significance'.

That's exactly what I was saying to you in the above, you were doing that IMNSHO.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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The problem I have is with the view that the role of a translation is to induce an "equivalent conception".

'Meaning' is much more than conception. It has to take into account the gamut of communication theory from conception to apprehension, exactly because that what the original author was doing. He or she was not merely setting out a conception, as though communication was s sterile expression of mere facts in a vacuum. The translator has therefore also to take into account the stages of communication (conception – encoding – transmission – reception – perception – decoding – apprehension) so that the audience is ready to do what you suggest follows: decide whether to accept the message or not. I agree that the reaction may be negative, but it is at least the task of translation to get the communication in a state where it can be applied to specific situations. That's where 'significance' comes in – it may be the role of the teacher/preacher to apply the text (to make it significant) to those specific local situations, but he or she is not helped if the translation activity results in an output that fails to do justice to the original affective intention.

There are those who argue that communication is actually always more than the passing on of mere information. That might be true. It always has an import, an agenda if you like. It is the output of a human who is seeking to effect change by affecting an audience. To take the human element of “God's word in human words” seriously is therefore to take seriously communication as it is practised. This is why a focus on impact (affective import) is so useful in translation theory.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
'Meaning' is much more than conception.

Translation is fundamentally about the meaning of words, sentences and text at the level of understanding. I most decidedly do not want a translator to rewrite the text in order try to elicit some kind of social-emotional target reaction in me. If I am not in the same receptive state for the text as the contemporaries of the author were, then that is perfectly fine. It is not the role of a translator to compensate for that by massaging the text. That's just falsification, and brings the translator's own comprehension way too much into the foreground.

Just to be clear, of course emotions are part of the "understanding" that texts try to convey, and also they need to be appropriately translated. But that does not mean that I should translate say a Shakespeare love sonnet into a German love rap, just because young Germans may find the sonnet format "too boring to care". There is a difference between doing justice to the emotional appeal embedded in the text, and hunting for the emotional impact in the listener. It's perhaps difficult to draw an exact line, but I do think that there is one.

Let's say I read "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx with a mixture of bemusement, incredulity and anger natural to a reasonably happy member of a 21st century capitalist society having perfect hindsight on a century of horribly failed, nominally Communist societies. Clearly this is not the kind of reaction that Marx wanted to achieve in his contemporaries, nor indeed even the reaction he did get from his contemporaries. If a translator would try to achieve the same kind of reaction in me as was seen among Marx' contemporaries, he would pretty much have to write an entirely new text at best loosely inspired by what Marx had written. And since in this particular case I would actually be able to read the original, and compare it to that "translation", what would I say about it? I would say: "That's a horrible translation - no, this is not a translation at all."

I fully agree that it is naive to think that one can translate a text "one to one". The language that I speak and the culture that I have will require accommodations, or I will simply not comprehend what is being said. But to minimise such accommodations is still the ideal! If we are talking scripture, then there is an entire different level of text production that deals with "bridging the gap" to modern concerns. Commentaries, exegetical literature, preaching, ... all these things try to make things meaningful to us in the wider sense. But that's not the translator's job, in my opinion.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I most decidedly do not want a translator to rewrite the text in order try to elicit some kind of social-emotional target reaction in me.

Herein lies, I think, the issue that faces theorists of translation today. I would argue that to read a text that does not elicit an emotional response in me is to waste one's time. Such a text will not elicit communal acceptance to the extent that the biblical writings have. I can't imagine how a reader/hearer of Ecclesiastes (to continue with that book to hand) in the ancient near east would have bothered to recommend it to others, never mind for a community to retain, copy and disseminate it, if it had not resonated powerfully and pragmatically. If, in other words, the rhetoric of composition was so successful that it affected the audience. And if that was the case with the biblical writings, then my point would be that we (talking about an audience from within a related faith community – not the world at large necessarily) should treat the process of translation with the same holistic methodology.

This isn't say that a standard (if that's the right word) translation product can't be applied to specific contexts. To use the Marx analogy, we could read "The Communist Manifesto" with the aid of commentaries that set out the context within which he wrote – the social-economic environment of the time, for example – so that the text comes alive to the reader in a way that the translated text alone could not. Without those resources to hand, though, would we not risk a misinterpretation?

I could read the NIV of Ecclesiastes 1:2 (“Meaningless”) without having much of a clue about the original context and conclude that this was a nice little existential treatise. I would need the aid of commentaries and footnotes, etc., to open up the world of the author. However, in a more fluid translational space (not one amenable to the published English Versions in use in churches), I could skip out the middle man and move straight from author to reader by translating with a focus on impact.

So I, or someone braver than I, could open my sermon with “All that work you have faithfully done for this church over the years, all those sacrifices you have made with your time and money. It's all been a crock of shit.”

As I say, someone braver than I.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I would argue that to read a text that does not elicit an emotional response in me is to waste one's time.

Sorry, but I've dealt with this in the second paragraph of the post above.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Without those resources to hand, though, would we not risk a misinterpretation?

In my opinion it is not the job of the translator to rewrite the text so that it cannot be misunderstood by the present audience. It is the translator's job to translate the text so that it can be understood by the present audience. There is a difference. If the translator feels that he needs to go beyond the text as such in accommodating the present audience, then there is a device for that: it's called a footnote. Significantly, a footnote can be ignored if the reader choses to do so (perhaps for good reasons, perhaps for bad). Embedding "footnote material" into the text itself takes away that choice. That is to me a sign of a bad translation.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
So I, or someone braver than I, could open my sermon with “All that work you have faithfully done for this church over the years, all those sacrifices you have made with your time and money. It's all been a crock of shit.”

I would have no problem with you saying that in a sermon. It is entirely within the remit of a sermon to take such a biblical text and give it such a salty interpretation, to stir up the people. I would be less happy if you used this expression in your translation of the bible, because I think it is subtly misleading concerning the biblical author's intent and circumstances. But just to clarify, I don't think this particular example is particularly terrible, just a bit tone-deaf. I imagine much worse imposition when I talk about falsifying a text by overloading it with explanatory material.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
...I've dealt with this in the second paragraph of the post above.

Well not really, Ingo; to say there is a difference between the appeal embedded in a text (I assume you might include the rhetorical devices used, for example?) and the emotional impact in the audience, doesn't assist with the issue that in trying to uncouple one from the other risks imposing misinterpretations. I'm back to the Ecclesiastes example again: the English word “Meaningless” might avoid the charge of seeking an emotional impact in a reader, but suppose that word carries a connotation for the reader that is out of sync with the author's original intention as expressed in the text?

I agree that supplemental resources can correct such a misinterpretation, but my point is that there's no need to risk it in the first place, if the translator takes impact into consideration.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Well not really, Ingo; to say there is a difference between the appeal embedded in a text (I assume you might include the rhetorical devices used, for example?) and the emotional impact in the audience, doesn't assist with the issue that in trying to uncouple one from the other risks imposing misinterpretations.

It does. It says at what point one has to stop hunting after the likely emotional state of the reader. To use the Ecclesiastes example: what the author wanted to convey is a sense of ennui even though he is talking about the covenantal life. That (the ennui) is emotional information that the translation must capture. But the author may well have expected that superimposing such ennui with the covenant leads to shock in his audience. Whereas perhaps it is true that it doesn't in the audience today (though I'm not so sure about that). However, that (the shock) is not something that the translation has to cause. The shock there is secondary in meaning, so to speak. It is an interaction of the meaning of the text with other meanings that the audience is carrying around independently of the text. I think it is both hopeless and unwarranted to try to match all these secondary interactions. The translator does not have the job of finding something "equivalently shocking", the translator has the job of conveying "equivalent ennui". He can leave the emergence of shock to the state of the reader. (Of course, if he can add some "shock" for free, then he might decide to do that. But that should not reduce the equivalence of the primary meaning. Trying to elicit secondary interactions should not be done at the expense of the primary meaning of the text.)

By the way, I'm sure that I'm reinventing the wheel here, and that there is "professional" vocabulary which I really should be using. But I am not read in the field of translation, and I'm groping for some way of expressing what I think here. I find this quite difficult, actually.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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I'm not sure that a sense of ennui (which actually feels it owes more to modern existentialism) is what the author intended to convey. This is why I think “Meaningless” misses the objective. I can imagine a 20th century western audience adopting a languid pose, sighing heavily, and groaning about how devoid of purpose life is when viewed through the lens of materialism. “If we're all mere particles,” I hear them say, “Then of course all this has no meaning. It's a waste of our time getting excited about life. Might as well just plod on until we die and rejoin the universe of atoms.”

Of course that world view had no place in the time of Ecclesiastes. A universe devoid of the divine never entered ancient near eastern cosmological thinking. So the import of the evocative word in Ecclesiastes 1:2 would, I think, be misrepresented by “Meaningless” - at least to an audience that has inherited existentialism as one strand of its modernity. “Profitless” might be an English word that gets closer to the original. Even so, I think we are still short of the money here. Without considering the impact of the exclamation in Ecclesiastes 1:2, especially in it setting of covenant order, we risk misinterpreting the whole piece.

I think we agree on most of the points at issue, especially the importance of authorial intention as a focal point of the translator's task. At issue seems to be actual intention and then the scale of involvement by a translator. Interestingly, what we are getting at could apply equally, it seems to me, just as much to a 'literal / formal' version as a dynamic / functional' one. The choice of words is secondary to the decision that needs to be taken on the choice of words that validly represent the author's intention.

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Of course that world view had no place in the time of Ecclesiastes. A universe devoid of the divine never entered ancient near eastern cosmological thinking.

It's a side issue, but I'm pretty sure that that is false. If there were no atheists in ancient times, then the bible would not have bothered to explicitly describe them as foolish (Psalm 14:1, 53:1) and St Paul would not have spilled ink on analysing them (Romans 1:18-25). I would not be surprised if AAA (atheism, agnosticism, apathetism) was fairly common in the Roman Empire. In particular among the elites, but not only there. However, since they effectively ran a state religion back then, declaring atheism was basically declaring treason. In consequence I bet a lot of "going through the motions" was going on back then, and this may well have been one reason why Christianity could grow so explosively: it wasn't eating a healthy paganism, but a hollow one.

I would furthermore add that "acedia", the noonday demon, was a primary target of the Church Fathers and ended up as one of seven cardinal sins. It may well be that the existentialists added a particular flavour to their ennui, but these kind of mental states I am sure have been around forever. So maybe there is a danger for us to make Ecclesiastes a bit too modern French. Maybe. But I don't think that we are reading torpor into his world view. It was there to be found.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I think we agree on most of the points at issue, especially the importance of authorial intention as a focal point of the translator's task. At issue seems to be actual intention and then the scale of involvement by a translator.

Agreed.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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The atheist thing is interesting, because both Justin Martyr and the work Martyrdom of Polycarp record that the Roman leaders charged Christians with being 'atheists'. What was meant by this was not that the Christians believed that there were no gods, but that they did not worship the state gods (including the divine emperors). Being an atheist was to be a traitor, a threat to state stability. In effect, loyalty was being given to other god(s), not those of Rome.

For the same reason Jews could be charged with being atheists. Josephus records this in, e.g., Against Apion, Book 2.

I suspect that the modern concept of atheism (as a rejection of belief in any divinity) did not apply to the world the bible writers inhabited. Backtracking, this would mean that the famous “The Fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'” does not carry the connotation associated with our modern Enlightenment era concept of atheism, but rather a claim that those Jews who reject Israel's God turn out to be corrupt. It's not that they did not worship any god at all, but that their loyalty was suspect because they rejected the state God.

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ThunderBunk

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Authorial intention has to be reconstructed (i.e. created) by the translator as a result of his reading before it can be incorporated into his translation. It can shift within a piece, it can be diffuse.

It's a hugely problematic concept, and one I will return to. However, I have a feeling that my M Phil hood (from an MPhil in literary translation) would animate itself and strangle me if I didn't say something now to challenge this concept.

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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".

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Nigel M
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Go for it, ThunderBunk! I know the issue of translation (and where the focus should be) has been discussed for many decades now across assorted linguistic fields, but as it plays such an important role in biblical studies (never mind the wider religious, political and legal fields), it is certainly worth discussing. It may be that this will need another thread, unless it can be constrained within the OP orbit.
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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I suspect that the modern concept of atheism (as a rejection of belief in any divinity) did not apply to the world the bible writers inhabited. Backtracking, this would mean that the famous “The Fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'” does not carry the connotation associated with our modern Enlightenment era concept of atheism, but rather a claim that those Jews who reject Israel's God turn out to be corrupt. It's not that they did not worship any god at all, but that their loyalty was suspect because they rejected the state God.

Well, what is clearly intended in scripture is somebody who de facto ignores (the Jewish) God, for whatever reason. I think this is a different concern to those who zealously worship a false God, though there may be an overlap. I would also bet that among those who "ignored God" one would have found some "true atheists" in the modern sense even back then. I think we are often projecting our scientific and technological superiority falsely into "conceptual" space, when considering history. But be that as it may, I think some upperclass Roman who lets the gods be gods other than for occasionally executing some ritual to remain in good social standing is reasonably compared to your run-of-the-mill 21stC apathetic atheist. There is a strong cultural flavour to their respective stances, sure, but they really are in the same place in a more fundamental sense.

I don't think scripture is approaching this quite from Roman "atheist = traitor" state religion angle. I think it is more an "atheist = immoral person" angle, it's more about the attitude "there is no God, at least none who cares what I do, so I can do what I want." If so, then I would say that the concerns of scripture are more relevant to our situation than the Roman concerns...

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Nigel M
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Absolutely agree that scripture speaks to modern concerns as much to ancient, and even if there was no biblical concept of atheism in a modern sense there is still an application. I think I'm just a bit more concerned to get the original authorial setting in mind before translating it across to modern equivalents.

Psalm 14 opens up an interesting angle here. I'll post it here for ease of reference:
quote:
The fool says to himself, “There is no God.”

They are corrupt and produce offensive things; nothing good.
From heaven Yahweh looks out at humanity to see if anyone understands and follows God.
Everyone walks away; together they are all corrupt.
None of them does good, not even one!

Don't these evildoers know anything?
Those who devour my people as if they were eating bread,
They do not profess loyalty to Yahweh.
In that place they would be absolutely terrified, for God defends the righteous.
You want to humiliate the oppressed, but Yahweh is their shelter.

Oh I wish Israel's deliverance would come from Zion!
When Yahweh restores his captive people,
may Jacob rejoice, may Israel be happy!

I'd nuance your idea of the link to immorality a bit by defining it along these lines: Those who are not loyal to Israel's God are also without Torah, in the sense that they do not feel bound in any way to obeying God's law for life. Not only are they 'a-theioi', they are 'a-nomos'. If the setting of this Psalm was the Babylonian exile, then this is a reflection on the rule by those whose loyalty is elsewhere. They have no stake in Yahweh and consequently they have no obligation to God's law, but the outcome is a misrule.

This could translate by way of application to a question for all who are not loyal to God: Upon what basis, then, do you substantiate your behaviour in life? What rule, measure, law applies?

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Adeodatus
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I know little Greek and less Hebrew, but I do know enough Wagner to know that one significant problem is that there are some words that simply don't have an equivalence in other languages. One that's notorious in translations of Wagner's Meistersinger is the word "Wahn". It's variously translated as "madness", "delusion", or several other possibilities in that area. But it really doesn't have an English equivalent, and I'm pretty sure that when Sachs sings, "Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!" he's actually giving us a translation of what Qohelet is saying in Ecclesiastes 1.2! (Überall = "everywhere").

This is a significant problem, I think, in trying to come up with a literal translation.

(It might also be noted that the English have no term for joie de vivre. Significant?)

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"What is broken, repair with gold."

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Baptist Trainfan
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Allegedly, of course, George W. Bush said that the problem with the French was that they had no word for "entrepreneur" .....

I know what you mean. It's difficult to translate the Portuguese word "saudades" as it's not just a word but imbibed with a great deal of history and national sentiment.

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Nigel M
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Exactly the same problem occurs with translation of the biblical languages – that “You know, the French have a word for it” moment!

An example that causes no end of problems for Christians is the Hebrew word herem, especially where it denotes the God-ordained war (as opposed to regular war) against rebels, where if the rebels refuse to submit they are annihilated without exception (men, women, children, booty...). The idea is that the object of herem is handed over to God, without remainder. The English versions struggle to get the meaning across, even when using more than one word. Examples include: devotion, destruction, holy-war, ban.

The same applies to words translated into English by the word 'love'. The connotation and semantic range of 'love' in English do not do justice to the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek terms. Same goes for 'soul'. Terms like these carry too much baggage in English.

There's also a problem with words that have acquired a more technical meaning in English, such as 'sin', 'righteousness', etc. They have lost the living dynamism of the original terms and could do with replacing.

And as for the little particles...

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
One that's notorious in translations of Wagner's Meistersinger is the word "Wahn". It's variously translated as "madness", "delusion", or several other possibilities in that area. But it really doesn't have an English equivalent, and I'm pretty sure that when Sachs sings, "Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!" he's actually giving us a translation of what Qohelet is saying in Ecclesiastes 1.2! (Überall = "everywhere").

The problem with "Wahn" seems to me to be mostly that it is less specific than any of the English counterparts. I would explain it as "(self-)delusion with shades of obsession and compulsion, ranging in possible intensity from mere folly to barking madness". The particular phrase however somewhat conveniently allows one to stake out the territory, e.g., "Obsession! Delusion! Everywhere madness!" And I doubt that this is a translation of Qohelet 1.2. The Luther Bibel (which has a sort of KJV status) writes "Es ist alles ganz eitel, sprach der Prediger, es ist alles ganz eitel." And that's basically a perfect match to the KJV, since "eitel" means "vain".

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Planeta Plicata
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# 17543

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The standard Yiddish translation by Yehoyesh also goes for a self-consciously philosophical register, and a large portion of its audience would have understood the original (though perhaps not as the author intended it): Nishtikayt fun nishtikaytn, zogt Koyheles, nishtikayt fun nishtikaytn, alts iz nishtikayt.

(Nishtikayt, cognate with German Nichtigkeit, pretty much straightforwardly means nothingness or vanities in the KJV-sense.)

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by Planeta Plicata:
(Nishtikayt, cognate with German Nichtigkeit, pretty much straightforwardly means nothingness or vanities in the KJV-sense.)

Hmm, actually "nichtig" is more the kind of "void" that you encounter in the phrase "null and void", than simply nothing. The word "nicht" acts like the English "not", so I would say "Ich habe das nicht getan," for "I have not done that." Thus "nichtig" is something like "not-ly" or "not-ful".

It suggests something denied or invalid, it is something that does not have the meaning or value one could expect it to have. That seems to be a rather brilliant word to use here! [Smile]

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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I'm not sure if the following point has been addressed already - apologies if it has. What has become clear is that biblical (or any other) translation (apart from purely technical purposes) is not rocket science, and that meaning, import, significance and even truth are imprecise terms.

It is also obvious from any study of (especially NT) texts - and especially that of John's gospel - that even the (supposedly) recorded verbatim words of Jesus and others cannot always be left to the reader to make sense of. Dogmatic assumptions made some time after the event may determine what the evangelists or later theologians may feel obliged to add to their original sources.

quote:
Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. 39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time, there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days."
[John 11.38-39]

The above is the English translation in my old-fashioned RSV interlinear New Testament, and follows closely the KJV translation. It is far from literal. The Greek, transliterated, says "Lord, he smells, for fourth [day] it is."

Which rendered literally sounds like a statement of fact. But " there will be a smell" is a much more accurate rendition of the idiom she is using. There is in fact no smell as yet outside the tomb - but there will be if the stone is rolled back. For Lazarus has been dead for four days. Martha is making a very reasonable assumption.

The NRSV editors are clearly worried about the implications of the above. The new translation says "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." The stench has now become not a warning but an irrefutable fact.

The synoptics do not mention the raising of Lazarus. This might be because the authors were not aware of it. Or it might be that what was originally a rescue from a fate worse than death only later became accepted as a resurrection
from death. Martha's misgivings, as passed down to us in the earlier versions, may well have been the cause of Jesus' sudden transition from deep disturbance to unbounded joy.

But some things are not permitted to be true.

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Lyda*Rose

Ship's broken porthole
# 4544

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I don't know that you have to make the assumption that "Lord, he smells, for fourth [day] it is" isn't exactly what she means. I seriously question whether a stone placed in front of a roughly hewn tomb totally seals away odors. Maybe she did smell decay and warned Jesus that if the tomb was opened it would become much, much worse. We just don't really know. So, yes, translation is tricky.

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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

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Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

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Or you might say that if you were going to cut tombs in the rock face you would, if possible, position the tombs so that the prevailing wind takes any odours away from the village. Therefore, approaching the tomb from Bethany it would be entirely possible that they didn't smell anything but were not surpised as the breeze was coming from behind them. But, getting closer and then removing the stone would be another issue. And, if the apparent intention of Jesus was to enter the tomb to see the body and say farewell to his friend then they would be confident that the smell inside the tomb would be very unpleasant ... and likely to linger in clothing etc after coming back out.

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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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Or you might say that many people approaching a tomb where a man is known to have been buried four days previously would "automatically", so to speak, smell a decaying body. That people hear what they expect to hear, see what they expect to see, and smell what they expect to smell is a well documented phenomenon.

It's not necessarily about illusion. I'm not a neurologist, but I understand (imperfectly) that these things actually do happen - in the brain itself, where all the senses are processed.

The brains of people watching boxing matches send messages to their owners to duck!

[ 22. May 2015, 17:58: Message edited by: pimple ]

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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P.S. I certainly don't think it was Jesus' intention to have the tomb opened in order to say farewell to his friend.

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Jengie jon

Semper Reformanda
# 273

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But nobody has said it is Jesus' intention but it was what people thought his intention was.

Jengie

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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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We're straying rather a long way from the point, which was about the problems of translation.

Some English translations of the verse I quoted say "But Lord, there will be an odour/stink/stench - for he has been dead four days."

Others say "Lord, he smells/stinks..." (Admittedly the more literal translation)

Which is the best translation idiomatically.
And does this necessarily make it the best translation? And either way, why?

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

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The best translation idiomatically will always be the one that corresponds to the local idiom, wherever you may be. Coming from Midwestern America, we normally express hypotheticals using the future tense, thus "there will be" a smell. We are not Greeks.

So much for idioms. But there's another thing that interests me in what Martha says--

I don't think anybody would ever say "There is/will be a smell for it is the fourth day" unless nothing could be smelt at the moment. You don't stick an evidence clause on to a self-evident statement; if everyone was already wrinkling his/her/their noses, the comment would be simply "There is a smell" or just "Phew." The whole business of "it's the fourth day already" is necessary only when the smell of decay is not already self-evident for whatever reason. Martha is therefore hypothesizing in the absence of direct olfactory evidence.

Let's take a similar example. I can say to you as we sit in a coffee house, "Mr. Lamb is/will be home already, for it's six o'clock." But if we were both walking through my front door together and laid eyes on him as I spoke, there would be no need of the evidence clause "it's six o'clock." I would simply say "There's Mr. Lamb." Why offer you evidence for what your senses tell you already?

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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pimple

Ship's Irruption
# 10635

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I think you have it exactly right. So why does Jesus then say "Didn't I tell you....?" But that's probably a question for the Lazarus thread.

For this thread, why do some versions avoid the obvious idiomatic rendering "Don't open the tomb - there will be stink" and use the more literal "But he stinks - it's been four days."

One or two translations (e.g. Phillips's) avoid mentioning the stench altogether and say that Lazarus has been decaying for four days, leaving the reader to join up the dots. Why?

And lastly, why does the idiomatic translation we like in RSV become the more literal one in NRSV?
It's the same old story. Why the "tweaked" translation|?

[ 25. May 2015, 04:58: Message edited by: pimple ]

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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)

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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528

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quote:
Originally posted by pimple:

quote:
Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. 39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time, there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days."
[John 11.38-39]

The above is the English translation in my old-fashioned RSV interlinear New Testament, and follows closely the KJV translation. It is far from literal. The Greek, transliterated, says "Lord, he smells, for fourth [day] it is."

Which rendered literally sounds like a statement of fact. But " there will be a smell" is a much more accurate rendition of the idiom she is using. There is in fact no smell as yet outside the tomb - but there will be if the stone is rolled back. For Lazarus has been dead for four days. Martha is making a very reasonable assumption.

The NRSV editors are clearly worried about the implications of the above. The new translation says "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." The stench has now become not a warning but an irrefutable fact.


Okay, you're not going to like my answer, but I'll give it anyway. Here's the Greek:

39 λέγει ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἄρατε τὸν λίθον. λέγει αὐτῷ ἡ ἀδελφὴ τοῦ τετελευτηκότος Μάρθα· Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει, τεταρταῖος γάρ ἐστιν.

Literally:

Jesus says: "Take away the stone." She says (the sister of the having-ended-one, Martha): "Lord, now he stinks, for four days it is."

Okay, let's take it apart.

First, John is using the present tense (as writers do sometimes) in order to make the unfolding scene that much more vivid. We do it in English, and the Greeks did it in Greek.

Now the big problem in this passage if you're translating it for Westerners (I'll say Americans here, as I know them best) is the "Lord, he stinks" bit. This is just WAY too graphic and vivid in our culture for us to cope with. We have a lot less contact with the realities of death nowadays, and referring so bluntly to decay and its horrible ramifications is Just.Not.Done. Particularly by the loving sister of the stinking one.

Now imagine that you are a translator coping with this fact--that your target culture is very squeamish and genteel in this particular area. If you translate it very baldly and straightforwardly, with no concern for culture, what will happen? Your target readers will get badly badly sidetracked from the story as they mentally wonder what kind of a woman would refer to her beloved deceased brother in such terms. (See also the perennial American question about why Jesus would "insult" his mother from the cross by calling her "Woman.")

You don't want your readers to get sidetracked this way. You realize that the two cultures have different sensibilities about death, neither of which is right or wrong, they simply are. And you as a translator are not in a position to mount a crusade against Western namby-pambyism in speech about death. You have other things to do with your life. So your only realistic option is to make Martha state the facts using the same polite circumlocutions that an American would in the same situation: "Lord, by now there will be a smell" (note the conditional, which softens the blunt "is"); also notice that there is no agent mentioned--it's not "he stinks" but "there will be a smell"--coming from what, who? we won't think about that, shall we? no, no, let's gloss over the origin of the smell, which we all know though we're valiantly trying NOT to think about it).

I would argue that in fact, this is a GOOD translation for the majority of Western readers. It allows them to get the point of her objection and move on to the next part of the story, without getting sidetracked by illegitimate speculations about what kind of crude, coarse, unloving woman she must be, so make such a statement about her dead brother.

Allowing your readers to disappear down illusory rabbit holes into Wonderland is NOT good translation. One could even say it is a form of deception--it is lying by telling the truth (when you know they will misinterpret it).

Here's another example. From the cross, Jesus says to Mary his mother, "Woman, he is your son." (I'm focusing on the "woman" bit--"gune" in the Greek.)

Now "Woman" is perfectly polite and respectful as a term of address in koine Greek, even from a son to a mother. Jesus is saying nothing out of the ordinary at all when he calls her so. He is certainly being polite and loving.

And yet, in Vietnamese, to call your own mother "Woman" is a slap in the face insult. It implicitly denies that you have any relationship and that she has any right to respect from you at all. So if we translate the Greek with utter literalness, all of our readers will vanish down the rabbit hole of thinking Jesus is an extremely rude person and certainly NOT the Son of God at all, since he can't even manage decent humanity!

So, how to translate it? I have seen a few people waffle by inserting "dear" before it (i.e. "Dear woman,...") but that still leads to puzzlement. In our translation work, we have made Jesus speak as any normal Vietnamese son would to his mother: he says, "Me oi," which being interpreted is simply "Mother."

No doubt some will blame us for changing "Woman" to "Mother." And yet our readers know whom he is addressing, they avoid the pothole of wondering where he got such bad manners, and they move on to the rest of the story without problems.

I think it's justified.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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