[b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II)

Peter Kirk peter at qaya.org
Tue Nov 22 20:29:01 EST 2005


On 22/11/2005 21:49, B. M. Rocine wrote:

> ...
>
>
>Judge the diction against the targetted audience.  It is not he kind of 
>Bible you take to church.  It is big, thick, expensive, and a third or 
>more of the book is commentary.  Is all of this a clue to what the book 
>is about?  It is a translation for a pretty educated crowd, the kind 
>that would be intrigued with "welter" and willing to look it up if they 
>have to.
>  
>

Fair enough, if the target is a very specialised group as with NWT.
...

>
>As for whether all the words in narrative parts of the Bible are 
>familiar words, we have no way of judging that.  ;-)
>  
>

Well, we can judge something from the sheer number of different words. 
The number of words in the narrative parts is probably less than a 
typical native speaker's vocabulary. That suggests that the great 
majority of these words are familiar ones, although it can't tell us 
about every individual word.

>We *have* a way of judging whether _bohu_ is unfamiliar.  It has an 
>elusive etymology.  It only appear three times in the Bible, always in 
>conjunction with the more familiar word tohu, and twice as a veritable 
>allusions to the first in Gen. 1:2.  It rhymes with _tohu_.  Alter's 
>suggestion that _bohu_ may be a "nonce word coined to rhyme with 
>[_tohu_]" seems plausible.  I don't say *probable*; plausible.
>
>  
>
Most languages have such doublets, often written with hyphens, e.g. 
English "helter-skelter", where one element or both is not an 
independent word. But that doesn't in fact affect the issue, which 
becomes whether the particular doublet was well understood.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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