Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

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/