Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James:

What is the role of tradition in translating? Connected with this, would a
translation that is out of the stream of tradition be rejected, even though
it may be more accurate?

The reasons for the questions is because how many words and semantic fields
are defined not by linguistic patterns, but by tradition? The modern
translation follows the KJV follows the Vulgate follows the LXX and if the
LXX made a mistake, all the others follow that same mistake? Even though a
translation may be directly from the Hebrew, could it be that the
understanding comes through the translations that were made previously with
the new translation based on that understanding?

Though I have read Tanakh many times cover to cover, only once was that in
translation and that only the first time, so I can honestly say that almost
all that I know of Tanakh, I learned reading it in Hebrew. As a result, I
don’t know the traditions, so how much would my translation differ from
others who know the traditions? (Actually, I think I would translate only a
few verses radically differently from other translations, and none of those
verses would change a single teaching found in Tanakh.)

Karl W. Randolph.

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 6:01 AM, James Christian
<jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>wrote:

> Me too. This is evidently a very complex task. When people make what seem
> to be subjective judgements of translation there is evidently a very
> complex and objective neural process underlying their decision making
> process. I would suggest that semantic fields associated with words has a
> lot to do with it and that usage in certain contexts dictates which meaning
> of a word was meant and therefore which translation would be judged best.
>
> Of course, then we get into a play off with fidelity and fluency where
> the two may at times come to heads and disagree. Perhaps we could be
> talking about some kind of f-measure like with precision weighed against
> recall.
>
> James Christian
>
>