Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

Rolf wrote:53:9 He will assign (WAYYIQTOL) his grave with the wicked ones, 
and with the
rich in his death, though he had done (QATAL) no violence, and there was no
deception in
his mouth (nominal cl.).

end quote.

In your translation you were using the future more or less 
consistently and the you decide to render 'he had done (QATAL) 
no violence, and there was no deception in his mouth'.
On what basis did you decide to switch to the past here?
Could it not just as easily have been:

'though he will have done no violence'?

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>From peterkirk AT qaya.org  Sat Jul 30 06:50:18 2005
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Verbs, text-segmenting and clause-types
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On 30/07/2005 09:30, Rolf Furuli wrote:

>... My view of Bible
>translation is that the translators should refrain from exegesis as much as
>possible and instead whenever possible make a text that gives the reader the
>opportunity to do the interpretation. ...
>

Thank you for this clear statement. While I don't agree with this, at
least for typical target audiences, this is a clear and rational
principle. This seems to mean that where there is an ambiguity in the
meaning of the original, translators should make no attempt to resolve
the ambiguity but should present an ambiguous text to the readers. In
general I don't think this is possible, but it is a reasonable aim.

>... There may be situations where the
>temporal reference is ambiguous in the original text and where the
>translators will preserve this ambigousness. But in most instances it is the
>duty of the translator to make decisions regarding the temporal reference of
>the verbs and convey these to the readers. In other words, the reader should
>be able to in an easy way to find the temporal reference of a passage in an
>English Bible translation.
>
>

But now you seem to be contradicting your principle. For, rather than
refraining from exegesis and preserving the ambiguity, you now insist
that with verb forms translators should make the exegetical decision
concerning the temporal reference and resolve the ambiguity in the
translation.

So how do you reconcile this apparent contradiction between your general
principle and your instructions for this case?

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



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