On 30/07/2005 12:50, Rolf Furuli wrote:
Dear Peter,
It is fine that you ask about contradictions, so I get the opportunity to clear up things in behalf of other list-members as well. Translation is interpretation, so a translator will all the time make decisions without the knowledge of the readers. In my view such decisions should be limited as much as possible - and that is the advantage of a literal translation - and footnotes should notify the readers of different possibilities.
Understood. Thank you.
One example of an ambiguous text is Psalm 22:17 K)RY YDY WRGLY, literally "like the lion my hands and my feet". Many solutions to this ambiguity have been tried:
NIV: "they have pierced my hands and my feet" ( LXX: "they have dug out my hands and my feet")
JPS: "like lions they maul my hands and feet"
NAB: "so wasted are my hands and my feet"
NET: "like a lion they pin my hands and feet to the ground"
NJB: "a gang of villains closing in on me as if to hack off my hands and my feet"
TEV: "they tear at my hands and my feet"
NWT: "like a lion /they are at/ my hands and my feet"
Poor readers!
I would say that the best solution here has NWT, which gives a literal rendering but adds in brackets three words that make the text legibile. The text is still ambigous, and the reader is allowed to do the interpretation.
Well, no, because the NWT rendering rules out the alternative interpretations of K)RY (based in part on alternative texts) as "they have pierced", "wasted", "they tear", and perhaps "a gang of villains" although perhaps this last is based on understanding "lions" as a metaphor. In fact NWT even rules out the plural "lions" preferred by JPS. By choosing the textual and exegetical option "like a lion", which I agree is a good one, most other possibilities are ruled out, and bracketed /they are at/ is almost demanded by the context. Now every translation must make such a choice of one reading to put in the text, as there is no possibility in English of maintaining ambiguity between "like a lion" and "they have pierced". But NWT, if there is indeed no footnote here, breaches your good principle that "footnotes should notify the readers of different possibilities".
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Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
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