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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] About a translation of the name of God "YAHWEH".
  • Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 15:47:14 +0200

Dear Spyros,

Looking through my in-box I found your post from April. As far as I can see, you got only one answer. I have written two books on Bible translation and have translated many different documents from several Semitic languages into Norwegian. I can therefore make some comments on the basis of experience.

A fundamental translation principle is that a proper name, which refers to one particular person or to one particular place shall not be translated. Such a name should be transcribed according to the stock of phonemes of the target language. One possible (but not necessary) exception is when such a name is a part of a word play (cf. the sons of Isaiah) and there is no real reference.

When Bible translations render YHWH by "The Lord" and similar appellatives, the translators have violated this principle; they have taken something important away from the Bible text, and the readers are being lead astray. It can be compared to deleting the name "Jesus" from the New Testament, using appellatives instead of the name. That would also be a false representation of the original text.

The problem is that so many Bible translations do not use the personal name of God, and therefore it seems that this is a correct procedure. But, from the point of view of the laws and rules of applied linguistics, this is downright wrong!


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




Dear members of the group,

Since I am a translator of the Bible,
I wish to know your opinion:

Is it correct to translate the
"ineffable" strict name of God "YAHWEH" as "The Existing One"?


If you agree, please show me scholar references and bibliography,
mostly findable in the Internet.

Thank you.

Spyros
Karalis

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  • Re: [b-hebrew] About a translation of the name of God "YAHWEH"., Rolf Furuli, 05/10/2010

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