Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT ozemail.com.au>]

True enough, Trevor. Indeed (as Relevance Theory has taught us) we all
infer the sense of a text or spoken discourse from all kinds of clues,
some of them very incomplete or corrupt. And I agree that where a
corruption is obvious (and unambiguous) the text should be emended
accordingly. Though I would suggest that that is true far less often
than the BHS editors thought.

But you haven't dealt with the case I mentioned where you have a text in
front of you which you have undertaken to translate, and you find a
corruption there which you do not know how to correct, because we are
lacking adequate contextual clues; you can make sense of the words, but
they don't make sense in the context. This may be rare, but it does
happen, in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere (including in MS Word
corrected documents which have meaningful words which often don't make
sense in context, and you can't always tell what was originally
intended). What do you do? I still think that you should translate what
is in front of you with a note "this is what was written, but was
probably not intended", or simply "(sic)".

Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-hebrew-
> bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Trevor Peterson
> Sent: 29 January 2003 05:00
> To: b-hebrew
> Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Emendations, was: Deut 32:5 SHiCHeT
> 
> >===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT ozemail.com.au>
=====
> >Your "Ich bin ein Berliner" example doesn't quite work because there
is
> >an obvious emendation which should be made in a translation. But
suppose
> >you were translating an modern English text into some other language
and
> >came across the words "I am a jelly donut". What would you do? You
might
> >conclude that the text you are translating is corrupt because the
writer
> >could not possibly have meant that, perhaps there was a problem in
the
> >scanning and OCR software. But there is no obvious emendation - at
least
> >if you don't know about the German ambiguity and Kennedy's speech.
> 
> Ah, but now you're adding a new dimension to the situation. If it were
an
> English text, and I were reasonably certain that it wasn't already a
> translation from something else, the German issue would be completely
> absent
> from the picture. True, if I were aware of Kennedy's speech and the
issue
> there, I might make a connection to what's going on in this English
text.
> Maybe the author was making a play on the German scenario, in which
case,
> my
> guess would be correct. Or maybe there is no relationship at all, and
the
> author had something else in mind. But at this point, it's really an
issue
> of
> intertextual analysis, not translation or lower textual criticism. The
> point
> of the illustration was that the original scenario (Kennedy's speech)
> calls
> upon the translator's knowledge of German to identify and deal with
the
> error.
> This is a reasonable part of the translator's task. But there is
nothing I
> can
> think of in English that would produce the error: "I am a jelly
donut." So
> as
> a translator, I would not approach the scenario you suggest in the
same
> way.
> 
> My point is this: When we read, if we read well, we pick up easily on
> various
> types of mistakes and corruptions. I had no problem reading and
> understanding
> Davies's In Search of 'Ancient Israel,' even though it's one of the
worst
> modern editing jobs I've ever seen in print. Whenever I came to a
> misspelling
> or other editing problem, I could easily see what the text ought to
have
> said
> and understand it on that basis. I didn't wrestle with trying to make
> sense of
> the text as I found it, because I accepted that it had mistakes. I
have a
> friend who seems to have some sort of gap between his brain and mouth
that
> produces a lot of meaning one thing and saying another. Sometimes I
> correct
> him as he goes along, but normally I just take the slips in stride and
> ascertain his meaning without difficulty. We do this sort of thing all
the
> time in our native language. The process may be a bit more rigorous in
a
> foreign language, but it can still be applied. Much of textual
criticism
> is
> simply learning to recognize these mistakes in Hebrew or whatever
other
> language and to ascertain what should have been written based on what
we
> know
> of how the language normally works. Now, the negative example is the
> spell-checker on MS-Word, which often fails to recognize a technical
term
> or
> personal name and suggests an alternate reading. This sort of thing
warns
> us
> against making the process too mechanical or automatic, and the need
to be
> sensitive to idiosyncracies. Of course, we are not all-knowing as
scholars,
> but then neither is the native speaker, yet somehow we all strike a
> balance
> between the impulse to correct apparent mistakes and appropriate
caution
> regarding the unfamiliar.
> 
> Trevor Peterson
> CUA/Semitics
>