Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 25/08/2003 22:59, furuli AT online.no wrote:

> Dear Peter,
>
> ...
>
> It is a pity that modern textbooks and courses for Bible translators 
> teach that functional equivalence and meaning-based translation  are 
> the only viable methods of translation. These are fine methods serving 
> good purposes, but the exclusion of the literal approach leads Bible 
> readers in a direction which prevents them from understanding what 
> lexical meaning really is.
Your last paragraph overstates the case. It is not generally taught that 
"functional equivalence and meaning-based translation  are the only 
viable methods of translation." They are recommended as appropriate in 
many circumstances (actually probably the great majority of 
circumstances in which there is not already a Bible in a particular 
language). But it is never taught that formal equivalence translation is 
invalid, rather that it is appropriate for certain audiences, those 
which are equipped and motivated for the kind of serious study which you 
recommend.

On the rest of your posting, I quite agree that the semantic model 
behind current Hebrew lexicons is seriously deficient. That is why I am 
working on a project to produce what could be understood as a new type 
of lexicon of Key Terms in Biblical Hebrew, based firmly on modern 
lexical semantics. Several of the issues you have brought up are being 
carefully addressed in this project. The approach we are using is I 
think not quite what you would prefer, but I hope the results will be 
more acceptable to you.

By the way, are you familiar with the UBS project for a Semantic 
Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, http://www.ubs-translations.org/sdbh/? 
There is some material there on the theoretical framework as well as the 
sample entries for the letter het. This is not the project I am working 
on, but it shares much of the theoretical framework.

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