(May 4, 2012 at 1:59 am)apophenia Wrote: There are two general strategies or poles between which translations fall. The first is using a literal word-for-word translation, even if doing so makes the text difficult or even distorts its likely meaning. The other is to attempt to capture "the spirit of the text," even if that means losing a lot of the detail of the original text and likely distorting the meaning as well. Unfortunately, there is no "solution" to this problem—any translation will suffer one or more of these problems.
That is one of several reasons why I highly value the NET. It translates using both the formal ("word-for-word") and dynamic equivalence ("the spirit of the text") methods; where it translates using the dynamic equivalence, it includes in its translators notes what the formal equivalence translation is and a hermeneutic justification for the choice of using the dynamic equivalence in that instance.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when
called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
(Oscar Wilde)
called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
(Oscar Wilde)
