The Evil One

All right, let's settle the Beijing/Peking question.

http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzpinyin.htm
http://www.windandwater.info/pinyin.htm
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/catalogin...onversion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tr...ion_of_Chinese
http://www.sinistra.net/els/sup/transcript.html#remains

All told: the chinese name for the city was transcribed as Peking in an earlier system, and Beijing in a newer, better system which is approved by China itself. Both are frequently mispronounced by those people (including me) who use the names without knowing the precise details of the transcription schemes in question.

We should therefore try to use Beijing, but language being what it is, we shouldn't be surprised if Peking hangs on in English for a while yet.

kctan

Pronunciation & language. In chinese your nick will be 'Ri Ya' (pinying version) which is completely different from your 'Rhea'. If you were to convert 'Ri Ya' back into english again, do you think you'll still end up with 'Rhea' ?

This doesn't post much problem if both language have the same pronunciation for certain groups of words. The problem comes when you don't have the pronunciation for certain sounds & you need to use an approximate. eg. Peter is 'Bi De' which still sounds much the same (sounds like 'bitter'), Steven is 'Shi Di Fen' which have a slight difference (sounds like 'cityven'), John is 'Zhan' which is completely different as there's no 'Jer' sound in the chinese language (sounds like 'gun' with 'zer' sound replacing the 'ger' sound).

That's why you have Jesus, Joshua, Iesos & Yeshu or whatever. Which is also why you have Peking & Bei Jing (one is a dialect spelling while the other is the official PinYing system). In my dialect, 'Bei Jing' will end up as 'Pak Khea'.

Simple enough ?

Rhea

(This is cool learning the Chinese parts!)

I do understand the need to approximate when you can't make the sound. That makes sense and is reasonable.

But if my Rhea goes into Chinese, and then back to English, why would the German speakers take that one when the original English is available?

And if I were your _GOD_ why would you (German) take the chinese retranslation when your scholars are digging into the English?

I totally understand transliteration (if I'm using the term correctly). I don't understand permitting "evolution" to occur on one's God's name. The game "operator" has been at work here and people are okay with that.

Not about some book, or politician, or playwright. But about one's GOD.




~shrug~ I guess I have to accept that people are okay with that. It seems so "telling" to me about what they accept and on what authority.

And I guess a part of that vertigo is having the suspicion that if I always called him "Yeshua" I'd be thought of as ridiculing in some way. Or definitely if I called him Joshie. Y'know? But that's what they've done and are okay with it. It just sends me messages. "Come on, Joshie and Yeshua and Jesus are the same. What's wrong with me calling him Joshie?"

The Evil One

Well, imagine that the German speakers have used the Chinese edition of Your Divine Word for over a thousand years. Your priests have preached your name in the Chinese version from the pulpit for ages and ages and ages. As far as they are concerned, the Chinese version IS your name (they're vaguely aware that the Your original language was actually English, but none of them speak English, and it's a dead language). Suddenly, Your high priest decides that using the Chinese edition is no longer mandatory - they can use the new German translation of Your word. Now the German translation has been prepared by scholars familiar with both English and Chinese. What version of your name do you expect them to use in the translation for popular use - the Chinese version (familiar to millions, engraven on the collective consciousness of your worshippers, used as a swearword, and written in every commentary on Your Word ever written) or the English version (again, technically more accurate, but really only recognised by scholars)?

English --> Hebrew/Aramaic; Chinese --> Greek/Latin; German --> English.

Rhea

LOL, that's where religion and I part ways, you see...

"What? we've been using the wrong name for generations out of ignorance? Well there's nothing wrong with ignorance unless it's willfull. So hey! Advertising opportunity! We can even eliminate the swear word this way. It's beautiful! This opportunity must be God Given™ Whoopie! Hey, have you heard the Good News™? We can get Everyone Talking. What an excellent reason to become front-page news without controversy while simultaneously appealing to the scientific folks who value research so much! We can show how we are willing to take the Harder Road™ and how we embrace facts!


or...


We could just keep using this because it's easier. Accuracy isn't really important, tradition is."





...


We just don't think the same, religions and me...

But that's okay, honest. My real inquiry here is to understand how they think not to impose how I think onto them. It's perfectly okay for others to think differently than me - I just needed to be led by the nose through the logic for doing it, because it wasn't going to come to me through my own biased thinking. Although the cognitive dissonance of choosing tradition over scholarship will remain, but hey, cognitive dissonance is not prohibited by the surgeon general, it won't kill me, it'll just make me skeptical.

I really do appreciate the discussion, that's the only way I can come to understand another way of looking at something. And even while I still don't agree, at least I can begin to understand. There's some value in that!

Amos

Maybe that's done because there is no truth to be found in the bible for "Truth seekers."

CX

Incorrect I'm afraid. IHSOUS is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshu'a. It doesn't mean anything in Greek. Ultimately because Hebrew uses a completely different character set than Greek, Greek speakers and writers HAD to transliterate Hebrew names. It's an unavoidable consequence of the lack of a one to one correspondence between the words in one language and the words in another. Likewise when the Greek is translated into English certain words, especially proper names, have to be transliterated into English. The English transliteration of IHSOUS is Jesus. Now one could argue that since it's a Hebrew name it should be transliterated directly from the Hebrew. In point of fact other characters in the NT named IHSOUS are rendered in English as Joshua which is the English transliteration of the Hebrew name. This is mostly done for convenience so that Jesus is not confused with other characters. Ultimately it's just a matter of arbitrary decisions which aid the reader. There's nothing particularly inaccurate about it. Truth be told Joshua is no closer than Jesus to the actual Hebrew name which is made up of characters that don't exist in English and sounds which are not typically spoken by English speakers.

Rhea

"No closer"? If Yeshua and Jesus are SO DIFFERENT from each other in sounds and are both equally far from the actual, doesn't that suggest that something different could be done?


Are we THAT incompetent at rendering names?


I know that sounds ignorant, forgive me. I _am_ aware of the dynamics. Quadaffi, Khadafi, Gaddafi... Al Kida, Al Qaeda, El Kaeda... Iran, Eye-ran, ear-ran, ur-ahn etc. It's easy to find examples of trouble doing this, but I *think* we can agree that all of the examples I gave above are MUCH closer to each other than Yeshua is to Jesus, no?

Are we really so incompetent at this process that Yeshua and Jesus can be called EQUAL (or even equally bad) to an english speaker? This is the best we can do really?

CX

I'm not really sure why it matters. We don't really know what ancient aramaic or koine greek sounded like in the first place. They are dead languages. If you have words that aren't translated definitionally, you have to transliterate. That process is pretty much arbitrary. Since the NT was written in Greek translations naturally approximate the Greek. Much more significant than names is the loss of idiomatic expressions. Language is both arbitrary and imprecise. I'll reiterate that I'm not sure why it matters.

Rhea

Well, that's a valid question.

My personal answer, fit only for me, is that if I am to believe the "tradition" I seek a source that cares about accuracy.

If the source thinks one thing is no big deal, what other details are no big deal? This raises questions in my mind that are important.


When a car salesman said to me, "this is a four cylinder car" and I asked, "then why does it have only 3 spark plugs?" and he replied, "the other one is probably in the back", I immediately dismissed him as a source of ANY accurate information. To him, it didn't really matter if he knew whether the car had 3 cylinders or 4. But rather than tell me that he saw no reason to care and admit that he had been inaccurate (or didn't know), he passed it off as unimportant.


That's just the way my mind works. If someone is to be a "trusted source" then they should care about details that they are claiming. That's all.


It's really a minor point from a minor person, but to me it affects their credibility to claim that "Yeshua" and Jesus" are the same in terms of pronouncing a person's name.