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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation
  • Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 01:17:17 +0000

On 22/11/2005 20:53, Bill Rea wrote:

Peter wrote:-


If anyone is confusing them, it is Bill, for he wrote of "Alter's
slightly quirky translation style". What I said was that Alter's
translation was "bad English", and I was referring to Alter, not Fox.


Whatever your powers as a mind reader may have been, they have suffered
a reversion to the mean :-) It's a physical impossibility for me
to confuse them as I have never seen Fox's translation.


Then obviously no one was confusing the two translations, and it was Bryan's mind reading which was lacking.

...

I read the other posts up to the end of Vol 35, Issue 28 ...


I have no idea what you are talking about with this reference.

... and I don't
understand the venom being poured out against Alter's work. ...


I don't understand the venom being poured out at me for daring to say that Alter is writing bad English. Perhaps it is because everyone bows down to him as a great English stylist. But this emperor has no clothes. He may be excellent as an exegete and commentator, but his English writing is bad, as I have demonstrated. Why am I not allowed to say that?

... This is
one man's translation of five books of the Hebrew Bible coupled with
an extensive introduction and integral commentary. If you judge it
by a standard other than what Alter has clearly stated in his
approx 40 page introduction, then you do it and yourself a
disservice. This was my point, which Rolf also made earlier, that
your (Peter's) view of translation is so narrow you can't appreciate
fine work outside your theoretical ideal. ...


Indeed, Alter's translation principles are not the same as mine. I haven't read his introduction - as I don't want to pay good money for bad English - but it seems to me that he is attempting to follow Schleiermacher's "foreignising" approach, according to which a translation from a foreign language is supposed to retain a foreign character and so deliberately not sound like a work composed in the target language, i.e. in this case which is not in good English. If this is Alter's aim, he has succeeded in it. His English is deliberately bad, I am sure, but that does not mean that it is not bad.

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





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