[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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