Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 15/11/2005 08:36, Rolf Furuli wrote:

> Dear Harold,
>
> While I believe that the word should be the fundamental translational unit
> even in idiomatic translation work, ...

Rolf, you wrote yesterday "Please do not judge the translators of a 
literal translation on the basis of your translation theory." Fair 
enough. But in that case, please don't criticise idiomatic translation 
theory on the basis of your translation theory. The theory of idiomatic 
or meaning-based translation theory is at its very base that the word is 
NOT the fundamental translational unit. Please don't try to change it.

> ...
>
> 1) The earth stands to time idefinite.
>
> 2) The earth stands indefinitely.
>
> Native speakers must use their intuition to tell the differences and
> similarities they see between the two clauses. But the expression "to time 
> indefinite" functions as an adverbial exactly as does "idefinitely". 
> Therefore,  the Thesaurus reference of Robert can rightly be applied to 
> "time indefinite" and the functions of this expression.
>
>  
No, Rolf, as a native speaker I must insist that, although "indefinite" 
and "indefinitely" are etymologically related, these two sentences have 
quite different meanings. Well, the first one doesn't really have any 
meaning, but I understand it as meaning the same as "The earth stands 
for an indefinite time", in other words "The earth stands now, but it is 
quite unknown how long it will stand for". Whereas the latter more or 
less means "The earth stands for ever". You cannot argue that because 
two sentences have comparable syntactic structure they have the same 
meaning.

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