Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George F Somsel <gfsomsel AT juno.com>]

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 01:37:15 -0500 "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
writes:
> Peter:
> 
> The example below of Chinese does not show how I translated, first 
> . 
> .  
> . 
> Also my teachers never considered a paraphrase of an English 
> translation the same as a translation, rather they talked about 
> literal vs. paraphrastic translations and shades between, all 
> derived from the original language(s).
> 
> Sorry George, I meant Jim.
> 
> Karl W. Rnadolph.
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In the spirit of "the last shall be first" (and since it's quickly gotten
out of the way), was my name mentioned and I didn't notice?  Well, it
doesn't matter so long as you didn't insult my parentage or ethics, but
you did pique my curiosity.  

That something should be called "periphrastic" seems somewhat different
from saying that it is a paraphrase.  One is "in  the style of a
paraphrase" whereas the other is the thing itself.  There are many
translations which might be called periphrastic which are in reality
translations.  It is impossible to simply gloss the words of a text in
order to produce a translation as you have noted yourself ("fire wagon"
e.g.).  Some languages are SVO and others are VSO.  If the order is
changed, some emphasis is indicated.  A Formal Equivalence translation
would need to account for this difference and perhaps invert the order of
the words in the translation relative to the original if he wished to
produce the same effect.  There are numerous other examples that could be
cited, but this is not the place nor do I have the desire to do so.  Of
course, one must remember the adage that a translator is a traitor in any
case.

george
gfsomsel
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