Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>]

Dear members

I think the fact that a translation is never perfect, in the sense
that it never exactly represents the original, is the main reason why
people should bother learning to read another language at all. It is
impossible to define what [good] translation is, simply because it is
impossible to define what a language itself is.

For example, why is there no translation of the Hebrew Bible into
modern Hebrew? I think modern Hebrew is about the only language left
the Bible has not been translated to!
(But I may well have missed the latest developments in modern Hebrew
bible scholarship)
Fascinating, isn't it? And b-Hebrew and modern Hebrew most certainly
are two different languages.
BTW the New Testament has been translated into Modern Hebrew, of
course. It has even been translated into Biblical Hebrew (see Snaith's
MT).

Lately I was in a discussion regarding 2Baruch (=Apocalypse of Baruch
or Syriac Baruch).
A very interesting text. The one Syriac manuscript is a translation of
Greek (which is beyond doubt: the text says it itself). But there are
people who say the original of the Greek was a Hebrew text, so also
the Greek is a translation.
Has anyone been giving this any thoughts? If it has a Hebrew Vorlage,
it can be discussed here ;) This text is not studied a lot, unlike
similar texts such as 4Ezra.

Regards,
Herman

2006/2/25, Tna Swg <tnaswg AT yahoo.com>:
> Hebraista/e:
>
>   While this may not seem to be onlist, please bear with me. I recently was 
> lucky enough to get a copy of Louw and Nida's Greek-English Lexicon of the 
> New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. I was reading at it random, what 
> a delight, and I remember someone, I remember not their names, said that 
> interpretation was not the same as translation.
>
>   While I consider that all interpretation is not translation with target 
> and source languages, where these two are different beyond what I 
> understand Diakonov's level of dialect is, but all translation is 
> interpretation. Is this based in definitions? Interpretation is to make 
> clear, to proclaim, if I can be so silly, and translation, good 
> translation, of course, doesn't it or isn't it the hope to mean something 
> clearly. Preferably what the intentio auctoris was/is/shall be.
>
>   Just asking. I don't know if this qualifies as onlist type of discussion. 
> If it doesn't, mea culpa.
>
>   Regards,
>
>   Marc Bauer
>
>
>
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