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<\/a><\/p>\nThe Biblical writers of the OT prose revel in repetition, and are not much given to using synonyms, when one particular word will do the job wherever it needs to be used.\u00a0 It is in poetry that you will find them using synonyms from time to time. \u201cThe translator\u2019s task, then is to mirror the repetitions as much as is feasible.\u201d (p.xxvii).\u00a0 Yet surprisingly, even with this deliberately limited vocabulary the terms used can convey nuance for instance \u2018the man who is lord of the land made us out to be spies in the land\u2019. (Gen.42.30) rather than the more direct \u2018accused us of being spies. \u201cIt should be clear from all this that a translation that respects\u00a0 the literary precision of the biblical story must strive to reproduce its nice discrimination of terms, and cannot be free to translate a word here one way, and there another for the sake of variety or for the sake of context.\u201d (p. xxix). Here I must offer a partial correction\u2013 words do not have meaning in the abstract. It is not true that in the beginning was the dictionary.\u00a0 When a word has a spectrum of meaning, context is important in determining which translation should be offered.<\/p>\n
Alter deals with a Hebrew word, nephesh\u00a0<\/em>which has no exact lexical equivalent in English.\u00a0 It refers to the breath of life in the nostrils of a living creature and by extension it means lifeblood or even just life, or even just person.\u00a0 What it does not mean is soul, in the Greek sense of that term. (p. xxix).\u00a0 Alter also points out that word order is often expressive, but alas many modern translators ignore this fact.\u00a0 For example the Hebrew of\u00a0 Gen. 12.7\u00a0 reads \u2018to your seed I will give this land\u2019, deliberately front lighting \u2018your seed\u2019,\u00a0 whereas the tendency by translators is to have I will give this land to your seed.\u00a0 Or consider Gen. 16.8 which reads literally \u2018from my mistress Sarai I am fleeing\u2019 front lighting the source of her problems. (p. xxxii). The goal here is to avoid losing the emphases or nuances in the original Hebrew diction.<\/p>\nAs Alter stresses, most Hebrew specialists recognize that Hebrew poetry uses older Hebrew diction than Hebrew prose, a deliberate archaizing. (p. xxxv).\u00a0 But one has to be careful not to lapse into stereotypes of ancient English (forsooth, ye verily) while figuring out a way to offer more eloquent archaizing.\u00a0 \u00a0The more I read of Alter, the more it becomes clear that the translator of Hebrew must not only know Hebrew well, but also know English literature well to know h0w to express the Hebrew texts in a meaningful and accurate way in English.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Biblical writers of the OT prose revel in repetition, and are not much given to using synonyms, when one particular word will do the job wherever it needs to be used.\u00a0 It is in poetry that you will find them using synonyms from time to time. \u201cThe translator\u2019s task, then is to mirror the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":68479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15052],"class_list":["post-68512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-its-all-hebrew-to-me"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n