Biblical Hebrew Forum

[mjoseph <mjoseph AT terminal.cz>]

Dear Rolf:

Thank you for your response; I really appreciate your input, and know how 
busy you must be. As I suspect that no one beside you and I is interested 
in this (after all, no one responded to my post but you; no one has 
responded to your post so far but me), I will keep my comments very 
brief, especially as I think we may be speaking past each other.

>and this does not include the target group
>for a strictly literal translation. Without taking the particular target
>group into account (in this case the target group of the NWT), your
>criticism overshoots the mark.

I believe this needs no comment.

>Translation is communication, and the interlinear Bibles communicate almost
>nothing, they just substitute words. While interlinear bibles are fine
>tools for Bible study, they are not translations in the normal sense of the
>word. When I speak of strictly literal translations, I think of those
>translations that use the sentence structure of the original languages, and
>as much as possible use one English word for each "important" word in the
>original text.

This is not something qualitatively different; it it just a point in a 
different place on the line from "interlinear" to "modern paraphrase."

>>In short, I believe these "literal" translations to be poor because they
>>betray a lack of understanding of the nature of different languages. (snip)

>This paragraph shows that you have no experience with the target group of a
>strictly literal translation.

Mea maxima culpa.

>It seems to me that none of those who has participated in this thread has
>had any personal experience with a strictly literal translation; i.e. has
>studied its communicative  power, its weaknesses and strengths.

Life is short. I was addressing issues of language, not what one 
particular group might happen to want.

(Rolf's point about number of concepts represented by one word snipped)

>TEV's extensive  use of "world" may be problematic for those who want their
>food chewed by others, but the translators of this very free translation
>evidently reasoned that regarding KOSMOS, the readers must do the
>interpretaion ("translation"). And this is the crux of the matter. Even
>though the English concept "world" may be different from the concept
>KOSMOS, one signal (word) is used in each case. And then it is up to the
>readers to find the meaning of this signal and readjust the concept in
>their mind.  Because languages are so different, as you yourself has shown
>with many fine examples, it is not possible even for a literal translation
>to use one word for one word, but such a translation strives to to that as
>much as possible.

As the only comment I can make here is theological and polemical at once, 
I refrain, according to stated principles of the list.

(three long paragraphs of my linguistic analysis snipped)

>Your comments above are theological rather than linguistic and quite
>onesided.

Well, I snipped the three long paragraphs of my linguistic analysis in 
the interest of other's bandwidth. I'd only say that they somewhat belie 
what you just said.

Mark Joseph