Belacqua Wrote:Translation is always interpretation. We rely on the objectivity and accuracy of the translator to some extent. But Mr. Ball's advice, in the post above this one, is good. Reading the sentence is never enough. We have to know the historical context and literary tropes that the original writers used. Christian translations of the Old Testament in particular have been tricky, since the Christians want to read Christian ideas in where they didn't originally exist.Do you agree with the motto of the New International Version that to modern readers the Bible appears like a cryptic reference book, but that it's not how it appeared to the original readers, and that, in ancient times, anybody who heard the God's word would also understand it?
I am not sure that's the case. I think that the Book of Revelation was linguistically clear to the early Christians (unlike if you were reading it in the King James Version), but that its actual meaning was about as obscure to the original audience as it is to modern readers (Was it prophecizing the end of the world? Or merely the fall of the Roman Empire?). And I think that some verses in the Vulgate would confuse a native speaker of Latin. In Judith 8:34 in Vulgate, which is quite a literal translation of the Greek original, it says "Et revertentes abierunt.". Try to, without looking at modern translations, come up with a meaning which is both grammatically possible and logically possible. Can you? When I was reading the Bible in Latin, I was not able to. And, when I looked at modern translations, they seemed rather fanciful. I am no expert in Latin and Greek, but I think that passage would sound like an ungrammatical gibberish to native speakers of Latin and Greek.
