Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Peter, I don't share any organisation's 'theology' except my own 
which I personally believe is the direct result of a combination 
of my life's experiences, reading the bible and allowing Yah's 
spirit to influence my understanding of it.

Before I started studying modern languages I stood firmly behind 
NWT's policy of 'one target word = one source word' because I really
didn't know any better. After I learned a bit of a few languages and 
had a few experiences of not being understood when attempting to 
communicate in a language not my own my experiences started to mould 
my mentality and to understand that the 1:1 approach was wrong.
As I got further down the road I also realised that any attempt to 
translate was wrong and in order to really learn a language I had to 
completely abandon my first language and allow myself to be absorbed 
by the target language.

It was then that I started to realise that each language has its own 
limits and range of expression and these differences started to stand
out to me dramatically. But after the novelty of the differences 
started to wear off it became evident that every language I came into 
contact with was unified in the greater family of languages by its 
consistent usage of core concepts. Every language has a way of expressing 
love, hatred, hunger, joy, sadness, remorse. regret, happiness, bewilderment,
surprise etc. etc.

I am thouroughly convinced as a direct result of my travels and experiences 
that these core concepts are the common denominator of ALL languages both 
living and dead. When you are young and you learn your first language 
what does your brain associate new words with? With these core concepts!
Your brain well understands the concept of hunger long before learning a 
series of phonemes that expresses it. Your brain is well capable of 
distinguishing 
between the various colours long before knowing the names your country's 
language 
attributes to them.

When I say that I agree with the NWT policy of consistency I mean that I 
agree 
that a particular concept should be translated consistently otherwise the 
translator could rightly come under the accusation of forcing his own 
interpretation on the poor readers who often remain in ignorance of the 
decisions which have been taken for them.

Where I disagree with the NWT is that those core concepts, according to my 
experience, cannot be mapped onto our current definition of a 'word'. The 
seperations we put between 'words' are quite arbitrary and some languages 
have extremely long words which are combinations of smaller words (see German 
for example). In English we have 'book' and 'shelf' and we have 'book shelf'.
Now should it be written 
book shelf
book-shelf
or bookshelf?
Any of the three would be fine as the combination of two words have such 
an intimate relationship that they define a unique concept which I struggle 
to imagine the situation in which its meaning would be ambiguous. These are 
the 
real words in any language and combinations of words are recurrent and used 
predictably and this, according to my translation philosophy, is the true 
unit 
of translation. 

My favourite example is get.

How shall we translate 'get' as a concept?
How shall we translate 'get up'?
How shall we translate 'get up to'?
How shall we translate 'get up to mischief'?
How shall we translate 'get up to standard'?
How shall we translate 'get up to no good'?
How shall we translate 'get up to heaven'?
etc.?

At what point do the above examples become unique concepts? In my mind 
neither 
'get', 'get up' or 'get up to' are unique concepts until we get the fourth 
word 
e.g. 'get up to mischief' and then it becomes clear to me which of the many 
concepts
this word could convey is actually intended.

In conclusion,
a) I agree that consistency is a requirement
b) I do not agree that the unit of consistency should be the arbitrary 
division 
we currently ascribe to 'words'


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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Deuteronomy 20:19 )DM
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Harold:

Good work.

In each of these cases, the question is a rhetorical 
question, not a true question with an open ended answer.

So in reading this verse as a rhetorical question, "Is a 
tree of the field a man to go into siege from before you(r 
face)?" or in better English, "are trees of the field men that 
you should besiege them?" i.e. that the trees are not the 
enemy.

Thanks.

Karl W. Randolph.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
> 
> Dear Karl,
> 
> > Are there any other examples where an interrogative hey
> > follows a KY in Tanakh?
> 
> HH: In Hebrew some verses are Gen 50:19; 2 Sam 19:23; 2 Chron 6:18.
> 
>                               Yours,

-- 
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