Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 17/11/2005 02:51, Read, James C wrote:

> ...
> Agreed! While I agree with the ideaology behind NWT translators decisions
> here I am adamantly against their conclusions and choice of words with
> which to translate them consistently. ...
>
> NWT has arrived at these 'plastic' translations not their use of 
> consistency
> but throught their failure to understand that the basic unit of 
> translation
> was not the individual word itself but the unique and repeating 
> combinations
> of words which convey the same underlying concepts which we find in 
> every single
> language either living or dead.
>
> I am fully confident that had the NWT translation team taken this into 
> account
> they would have produced a far more warming translation which 
> fulfilled the
> goals of both consistency and of faithful natural speech. ...

James, I am not sure what you mean by "I agree with the ideaology behind 
NWT translators decisions". If you mean you share their theology, I will 
let that pass without comment here. But if you are claiming to accept 
their translation philosophy, it seems that you are mistaken. For it is 
fundamental to their whole method that the basic unit of translation is 
the individual word. If they had abandoned this wrong idea they would 
indeed have produced a better translation. Since you are saying that 
they should have changed their fundamental philosophy, you can hardly 
claim to agree with them.

> ...
> Also as the word soul in English means 'immortal immaterial part of a 
> person
> which survives the death of the body' this was a very poor choice in a 
> translation
> whose aim is to demonstrate that such was not the biblical meaning. 
> Althoug, I
> have to admit that I struggle to find a single English word which 
> captures the
> concept which the combination of all its uses conveys.

Of course you struggle. For this is the fundamental falllacy of the 
literal translation method used in NWT, the presumption that there is a 
single English word, or even a short phrase, which corresponds even 
approximately to the full range of meaning of a Hebrew word. In general 
there is no one word in language B which corresponds to all the senses 
of a word in language A; language simply does not work like that.

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