Alf

A modern example of word-play is puns for example. Words that can have slightly different meaning if pronounced or spelled slightly different and if you use it in one of the wrong spellings from the context you convey that you mean something slightly different from what it would mean if you used the regular spelling.

I am no expert on this so pardon me for not giving any examples. Especially not in greek which is a foreign language to me. However, I understand from those who do understand the greek language that was used to write the gospels that they display word-plays that make sense only in the original greek language and could not make much sense to an aramic speaking person. I..e they make use of idioms - ways of expressing that was particular and only made sense in greek and if an arameic speaking person would say something he would have phrased it in a completely different manner.

Again, I have to take modern examples to show what I mean.

For example in norwegian a common greeting is "God dag" - it means roughly the same as "I wish you a nice and pleasant day". If you translate this to english and you say "Good day" it suddenly means something completely different - "Good day" is something someone say when they are angry at someone and wish them off. It is NOT a pleasant greeting.

Consequently, if you read some text in english and someone say "Good day" in a modern setting and it is from context not understood as a negative thing, you can deduce that the text is most likely a translation from a foreign country. As such this example is somewhat opposite of the examples in the bible, where the writers clearly show a greek origin to the phrases used while we would expect an arameic origin which is lacking.

To point it out - and I am neither expert in greek nor arameic so I only have this from other people who do know those languages - there ARE phrases that appear to be of arameic origin in the bible. Things that indicate that it has jewish roots and been retold in more or less original form. So you can see that the bible is a mosaic of bits and pieces of various origin - something you would not expect if it was a historical true story telling or reporting of true events.

Another example is the use of allegories. Allegories is something that appeared and became famous within the roman empire around the end of the first century and the early part of second century. Several examples of allegories in the gospels - where Jesus tell an allegory - reveal that these stories are not originally from a Jewish mouth from the early part of the first century. The jews did have a form of story telling where the story wasn't true and wasn't meant to be understood as being true but which nevertheless had a point and a gem of wisdom. The gospels also contain such form of stories - however, the allegory was unknown at that time and alien to jewish culture at the time. Consequently, for example, the story about the king who invited people to his celebration and sent servants to invite them and the servants got beaten up etc is clearly of a later date and was never told by Jesus.

So yeah, it is fairly obvious that the bible contain a mosaic where some things is of jewish origin and some things are clearly not and some things maybe have origin from around the early first century and some things are clearly of later origin.

An excellent point. The point is that unless you can reveal from context which one of the 20 meanings can be excluded, a truthful translation must clearly indicate that the word can mean a), b), c) d) etc and the story as a whole can change meaning depending on which of the meanings you make use of.

Of course, the original story was probably not so vague and uncertain and probably had a clear meaning to those who listened. We must therefore ask ourselves if we had lived back then and had the world view that they have, which one of those meanings would make most sense in this text? That is on the whole a very complicated question and is why translation is absolutely not an easy task to do.

People back then also used phrases and idioms just as we do today and they are a stumbling block for translation. If you have a story like:

This is an example of a sentence in norwegian. Now, the setting is a report from a court trial about an insurance fraud. Let us first try to translate it word for word:

I guess you get an idea of what the sentences mean but it doesn't sound right. What is this talk about lions? The situation wasn't supposed to talk about lions at all, what are they doing here? Ah yes, it is a norwegian idiom. "Up like a lion and down like a skin" (or pelt) and it means you first roar and show anger or bravery or an attitude of "I have nothing to fear" at first but it is all without substance, very little is required from the other party before you fall down and show that your roaring was without substance. So, what this means is that the guy at first claimed not only he was innocent but that some people were just out to get him and he was innocent. Unfortunately, the evidence was clear and so he changed 180 degrees once the evidence was presented.

The next sentence also show an idiom. In english you wouldn't say "On the other side" you would say "on the other hand", so a correct translation would be something like:

Of course, you can say that the translator do a very good job if he understands the idioms involved etc so that he can correctly translate a work. However, if the work clearly shows idoms, word-plays that only make sense in the language written while the story claim to have origin from somewhere else then it is a sign that the story has been changed a lot - the translator has taken some very creative liberties in his translation.

Of course, some times such liberal translation is appropriate but in general it is not if you are telling a story that is supposed to be true as opposed to a fictional story.

Alf

Dean Anderson

The equivalent English idiom (at least in British English - I've never heard an American use it) would be that the person was "All bark and no bite" - which compares the person to an aggressively barking dog that, when it's barking does not have the desired effect, backs down rather than attacking.

I would guess that this idiom sounds as strange in a direct translation to Norwegian as "Up like a lion, down like a skin" sounds in English.

Doug Shaver

You make it sound like "basic linguistics" is a doctrine or philosophy of some kind. It is just a plain fact that in just about any language, there are some words for which no other language has an exactly equivalent word. That does not imply, however, that no translation that renders the same meaning is possible. It implies only that it might take several words in the second language to convey the thought expressed by one word in the first language.

spin

I'd say, not some, but most words. A word is actually a "handle" for a bundle of ideas. This bundle of ideas is called a "semantic field" in linguistics. Mapping the ideas attached to a word in one language usually produces something different from the "equivalent" in another language.

A string of words which makes up a sentence can often have enough differences in each of its elements to make the translator's life hell on a daily basis. The translator knows that the meaning in that sentence cannot be transferred in its totality, so s/he has to compromise to get the best fit, otherwise to explain all the meaning in the sentence one could easily take several sentences, which would render the translation too difficult to digest for a reader.

To understand one of the problems that this causes, just do a comparison of different biblical translations. You'll often find that they seem to be saying different things. What will unify these disparate efforts is some knowledge of the original language.

Of course it is the more artistic usage of language which will suffer the most, because words are chosen with such exactness that each, at least for the writer, is the ideal choice. A simple example, take the title of the Coleridge poem, "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", translate it into a language of your choice and then translate it back, you can easily end up with "The Poem of the Old Sailor". Coleridge would turn over in his grave.

In German there are two words, kennen and wissen, which both mean "to know", the only problem is that they don't mean the same thing at all. And the English words "isolate" and "insulate" translate to the same word in some languages. Makes the translation business just that bit harder.

Try translating this into another language so that it makes sense: "He was such a bad terrorist, he got burnt lips from trying to blow up a car."

The language of the bible is often highly poetic in its nature.

And I've just come across a headline from a newspaper that caught my eye because it was simply weird. From an Australian online paper (internet is such a marvelous facility!) : "Monster breaks off Tassie". Any ideas of the meaning? I guess I could follow to the link to find out what it was talking about, but we don't have that luxury with ancient texts. (If someone finds out where the monster took Tassie, let me know. -- Shades of "Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a bat.")

What does a translator do when the source text uses grammatical or syntactic forms that don't translate? A simple glimpse at the type of problem here: the Germanic languages often indicate questions through a change in word order, many others don't. How might one know the difference between "Don't you understand" and "You don't understand" -- thank god for the question mark.

How do you translate the difference between "He has gone" and "He went"?? Oh, yes, some native speakers of English have sadly lost this distinction. Just shows that those who understand it won't be able to convey all their thoughts even to some native speakers.

Try translating this into Arabic:

"John's a good student."
"No, he isn't."
"Yes, he is."
"No, he isn't."
"Is so."
"Is not"
Etc.

Arabic of course has no verb to be.

There are no perfect translations. They all lose meaning one way or another. A translator's job is one long series of compromises made in an effort to bring the most content possible for the effort put in.

Then we could dig into literal translations and as against more fluid "looser" translations, where the former tries to get as close to the content as possible and often looses readability, while the latter often makes reading and gets further away from the content of the original. A bible translation such as the optimistically titled "Good News for Modern Man" is an example of the latter. A less literal translation is often the one that sells best. These bloody academic literalists.

Where meaning counts (and, no, I'm not talking about a counting entity referred to as "meaning") there is really little substitute for knowledge of the original language. But that's damned hard work, unless you are using that language continually. Other alternatives include, using a translation along with the original text, or using different translations which use different criteria in their philosophies, such as the NRSV and the Jewish Publication Society translation, so that you can be aware of ideological differences. If you're daring you might try the JW translation of the christian testament, along with your favored version.

I've sung my song and now it's time to ramble on.


snip

Julian

There can also be difficulties when translating to a language with a simpler grammatical structure. It is often necessary to add many additional words to clarify syntactical relationships and avoid ambiguity. I am reminded of the Groucho Marx (I think it was his) quip:

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How it got into my pyjamas, I have no idea."

The lack of a true dative form in English, for example, can make a sentence clunky sounding if clarification is needed. A free(r) word order language (like Greek) to a word order denpendent language (like English) translation can really screw up poetry, for example. There are lots of examples of grammatical problems. How do you translate the aorist tense and keep the idea behind the form? What about when the aorist is not indicative? Etc, etc, etc...

Julian

Amaleq13

Americans use it but my personal preference is:

"All hat and no cattle."

Kosh

Shazzam!

aguy2

Although the translators of the KJ correctly use the word 'subtle' in other contexts, in Gen. 3:1 the actual word they use is 'subtil' not 'subtle'. Is this an inspired error? The allegory concludes with both the 'the serpent' and 'the man' being told they will 'eat dust'. 'The man' is told he will 'till' the ground; is the 'the serpent' sent forth to do the same thing from thing from underneath (sub-til)?

Actually the term 'Eve' is not used till Gen. 3:20 at the tail end of the allegory. Gen. 5:1-2 implies there was a generation (stage?) when they were called 'Adam'. Gen. 3:1 says, "And he said unto the woman, Yea" and "Ye shall not eat of the tree". Could 'they' be seen as the fruit and the tree itself, and their name be 'Yea-ye' or even 'Ye-aye' (you are me?)? I realize this only makes sense in English, but doesn't the balance of the allegory talk of their 'eyes' (ayes?) being opened?

Xian theologists seem to see 'the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. I would think that that it could also be properly seen as 'The Tree of Knowledge of good and evil'. If this 'generation' were very early and primative their knowledge could not have included such knowledge as sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, physics, mathematics, ect, ect, but would likely be limited to self knowledge. Could the 'tree' be seen as 'good' because it is healthy and growing, and the 'fruit' as 'evil' because it is as yet unproductive and parasitic to the tree, and the primary purpose of its descendants to be the growth of knowledge?
aguy2

Clivedurdle

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=119035

Dean Anderson

No. "subtil" is just the 17th century English spelling of "subtle". It is exactly the same word.

Since the text was written in Hebrew, with no English translation in mind, any resemblence between "till" and "subtil" is clearly just co-incidence.

The woman is not named as "Eve" until then, but the author gives us no reason to believe that this is a different woman to the one who ate the fruit earlier in the story.

No it doesn't. It is a formulaic reference (called a "Toledoth" because the word translated as "generations" is the Hebrew "Toledot") taken from the "Book Of Records" (an old Hebrew source that was carved up and spliced into the Torah at various points. When the phrase talks about the "generations" of someone, it is referring to the list of descendants of that person (which are listed going down from generation to generation). So the "generations of Adam" are the list of his (Adam's) descendants. It does not refer to a "generation" called "Adam".

Well, I'd dispute that it even makes sense in English...

The thing to ask yourself with these interpretations of yours is: Why (and how) would people write something that can only be properly understood when translated into a foreign language that hasn't been invented yet - and even then, only in a very specific translation?

The answer, of course, is that they wouldn't. Even if you grant that God inspired the author, you have to ask yourself why God would make the text be only properly understood when translated into 17th century English; a language that the vast majority of his own devout followers do not understand.

No. The story makes it quite clear that the fruit gives knowledge of good and evil. The Christian theologians are right (for once) in this case. Your alternate interpretation is not evenly remotely supported by the text.