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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] VERBS

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] VERBS
  • Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:52:17 +0100

On 28/07/2005 07:27, Rolf Furuli wrote:

...

In my curriculum, when I studied applied linguistics at the University of
Oslo, was the following book of Peter Newmark (1988) (who had spent several
decades as atranslator) "A Textbook of Translation". (Newmark`s book was
awarded the British Association of Applied Linguitics prize in 1988.). He
writes (p. 2) "... The SL (source language) texts consist of words, that is
all
that is there, on the page." ...


Even the best qualified and praised writers can sometimes speak nonsense, or they can be quoted out of context. Yes, the text consists of words. It also consists of letters. It also consists of sentences. It also consists of paragraphs. At a rather more abstract level it can be considered to consist of morphemes and of phrases and clauses, maybe other kinds of discourse unit. Yes, all that is on the page is words. But equally, all that is on the page is sentences, and all that is on the page is letters. It just depends how you choose to divide things up. So this argument is not at all helpful in deciding whether the basic unit of translation (if such a concept is meaningful) is the word, or some other unit.

The concept of a word is anyway a rather artificial one. When two Hebrew words are connected by maqqef, does that make one word or two? If you say that there are still two words, is the preposition MIN still a separate word when it is written in the prefixed form ME-? Or perhaps you claim that the prefixed prepositions and conjunction are separate words. Well, on what theoretical basis? After all, there is no word division in the text in such a case.

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



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