Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II
  • Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:39:15 +0000

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/





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page