Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 05/01/2005 20:02, Jim West wrote:

> ...
> I think it depends entirely on how dependent you are on the English 
> version.  If, for instance, you translate your sentence from Hebrew to 
> english and then check it against an existing translation - thats one 
> thing.  If you take an English translation and you look at the Hebrew 
> text in order to, as it were, view it interlinearally, then thats 
> another.  The more dependent you are on English versions to verify 
> your own work, the less translating you end up doing and the more 
> paraphrasing.
>
> Lets take two hypothetical students.  One sits with his Hebrew text- a 
> dictionary, and a grammar and slogs through the tough work of 
> translating.  When hes done, he picks up an english version and says 
> "wow, they are pretty similar"!
> That person has translated.
>
> One, however, sits with an english version, a hebrew text, and a dozen 
> "helps" including an interlinear, a computer program with which to 
> look up words, and two or three phone numbers of hebrew scholars.  he 
> take his hebrew text and without taking an eye off the english he 
> "renders" what the hebrew appears to say.  That person has paraphrased.
This is indeed a good question. I'm not sure if it is one that needs to 
be answered, for any one translation, since what counts is the result 
rather than the way it was prepared - which is anyway probably not 
consistent through the whole Bible. It does become a significant issue 
when copyright is involved - a "new" translation cannot be too similar 
to a copyrighted version which was used during the translation process. 
But apart from that, why not just let the translation team use the 
easiest method of getting the right results?


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



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