Translation Terminology

[Deacon]

respect language: Also called honorific language, this points to words used to address someone of either higher or lower status in society. Some languages have as many as four or five levels of respect language. Japanese has (in my thinking): plain, polite, respectful, highly respectful, and imperial level.

Question: Does English have respect language?
Does NT Greek?

I lived in Cincinnati growing up; I've been told I still have a bit of an accent.
Once our 4th grade class got a bit rowdy and the principle was called in to handle us
He was busy yelling away... and each time he demanded we shape up, my friend, who came from a military family from the Deep South, would respond, YES SIR!
This went on quite a few times until finally the Principle, who was not used to such a response, yelled back - Stop saying that!
My friends training was so ingrained that he immediately responded, YES SIR! - and then realized what he did and shriveled up in disgrace.

Rob

 

[John of Japan]

I lived in Cincinnati growing up; I've been told I still have a bit of an accent.
Once our 4th grade class got a bit rowdy and the principle was called in to handle us
He was busy yelling away... and each time he demanded we shape up, my friend, who came from a military family from the Deep South, would respond, YES SIR!
This went on quite a few times until finally the Principle, who was not used to such a response, yelled back - Stop saying that!
My friends training was so ingrained that he immediately responded, YES SIR! - and then realized what he did and shriveled up in disgrace.

Rob

Good story. Alas, respect language is fading away in modern American English. I'm appalled at the filthy language--taboo language--seen all through American society nowadays.

 

[Deacon]

I'm appalled at the filthy language--taboo language--seen all through American society nowadays.

I'm an old hospital nurse, you'd be shocked at the language that we tolerate...both with patients and among colleagues.

Rob

 

[John of Japan]

I think that a truly educated person does not need such language to communicate.

There is a famous scene in the play “Cyrano de Bergerac” where an enemy tries to pick a fight with Cyrano in Act 1, so he insults his nose: “Monsieur, your nose...your nose is rather large.” Cyrano mocks him with much more effective insults which he could have used (with no taboo words):

“Oh, no, young sir. You are too simple. Why, you might have said a great many things. Why waste your opportunity? For example, thus:
Aggressive: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I’d have it amputated on the spot.
Practical: How do you drink with such a nose? You must have had a cup made especially.
Descriptive: ‘Tis a rock, a crag, a cape! A cape? Say rather, a peninsula!
Inquisitive: What is that receptacle? A razor case or a portfolio?
Kindly: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that when they come to see you, you give them this to perch on.
Cautious: Take care! A weight like that might make you top-heavy.
Eloquent: When it blows, the typhoon howls, and the clouds darken!
Dramatic: When it bleeds, the Red Sea.
Simple: When do they unveil the monument?
Military: Beware, a secret weapon.
Enterprising: What a sign for some perfumer!
Respectful: Sir, I recognize in you a man of parts. A man of... prominence! Or,
Literary: Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships?”

They then have a sword fight as Cyrano composes a poem, with “Thrust home” as the last line—which Cyrano then does.

 

[Deacon]

I think that a truly educated person does not need such language to communicate.

There is a famous scene in the play “Cyrano de Bergerac” where an enemy tries to pick a fight with Cyrano in Act 1, so he insults his nose: “Monsieur, your nose...your nose is rather large.” Cyrano mocks him with much more effective insults which he could have used (with no taboo words):

“Oh, no, young sir. You are too simple. Why, you might have said a great many things. Why waste your opportunity? For example, thus:
Aggressive: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I’d have it amputated on the spot.
Practical: How do you drink with such a nose? You must have had a cup made especially.
Descriptive: ‘Tis a rock, a crag, a cape! A cape? Say rather, a peninsula!
Inquisitive: What is that receptacle? A razor case or a portfolio?
Kindly: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that when they come to see you, you give them this to perch on.
Cautious: Take care! A weight like that might make you top-heavy.
Eloquent: When it blows, the typhoon howls, and the clouds darken!
Dramatic: When it bleeds, the Red Sea.
Simple: When do they unveil the monument?
Military: Beware, a secret weapon.
Enterprising: What a sign for some perfumer!
Respectful: Sir, I recognize in you a man of parts. A man of... prominence! Or,
Literary: Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships?”

They then have a sword fight as Cyrano composes a poem, with “Thrust home” as the last line—which Cyrano then does.

Steve Martin works off that scene in the 1987 movie, "Roxanne."

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=25778522201734850

 

[John of Japan]

authorial intent: the meaning the author intended to convey. In Bible translation, this is in opposition to Eugene Nida's "reader response," putting the responsibility for human comprehension on the Divine Author rather than the human reader. In other words, it would be very strange if a single human understood all that the eternal, omniscient God wanted to convey. God is in charge of the Word of God, not the reader, as in "reader response."

I can prove from his own books the fact that Eugene Nida, inventor of dynamic equivalence, was an existentialist, and thus neo-orthodox. He thus believed that reading the Bible led to an event wherein the reader had an experience, gaining his own knowledge not from God, but from his experience. That is what is behind his term "reader response." Thus Nida was a heretic.

 

[John of Japan]

Steve Martin works off that scene in the 1987 movie, "Roxanne."

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=25778522201734850

As I recall, that movie was a modernized version of the original "Cyrano de Bergerac" play.

 

[OnlyaSinner]

historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics): the study of how language develops and changes over a period of time, in particular the etymology of individual words. This becomes important primarily when a hapax legomena is present in the source document.

idiom: a word or phrase with a meaning different from the literal meaning. Example: "raining cats and dogs" (which makes no sense in other languages than English). My Japanese translation partner, "Uncle Miya" Miyakawa, loved English idioms, especially cat idioms: "Cat got your tongue?" A Japanese cat idiom is: Nekojita, or "tongue of a cat," meaning a person has a sensitive tongue (heat, etc.).

Any cat idioms to share?

As nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.