Translating grammatical forms

[Van]

Thanks

Funny, my dad recently presented a paper on this textual problem. Here it is for anyone interested: "The High Cost of Physicians: The Textual Criticism of Luke 8:43."

What do you think?

Sincerely,

Jonathan C. Borland

An excellent and compelling argument in favor of inclusion of the questionable phrase. I agree, the phrase should be included but footnoted (i.e. some early witnesses omit the phrase).

 

[John of Japan]

Someone needs to study grammar more. How about "by no one was she able to be restored to health.”

That's rich. Instead of answering my original objection to your original rendering, you change the rendering and act as if nothing happened.

Your original rendering in post #28:

Next "no one was able to restore her health" seems to best capture the grammar.

Now you're saying,

How about "by no one was she able to be restored to health.”

 

[John of Japan]

Funny, my dad recently presented a paper on this textual problem. Here it is for anyone interested: "The High Cost of Physicians: The Textual Criticism of Luke 8:43."

What do you think?

Sincerely,

Jonathan C. Borland

Great article, Jon. Thanks for linking to it. If it weren't for P75, the eclectics wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

 

[Van]

Hi JOJ, thanks for agreeing with my second translation. If you deny they say the same thing, that is rich.

 

[John of Japan]

Hi JOJ, thanks for agreeing with my second translation. If you deny they say the same thing, that is rich.

Sure, I agree with your second translation. And I deny that the two say the same thing.

 

[Van]

That's rich

 

[Yeshua1]

Sure, I agree with your second translation. And I deny that the two say the same thing.

guess they did to Van though!

 

[John of Japan]

guess they did to Van though!

I think Van rests happily in his contradictions. :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Rippon]

Rehashing

Yes, form = meaning.

No,it does not.Every translation has to alter the form in order to reproduce the meaning. Even so-called literal translations have to alter the original form to express the meaning of the text.

Words are translated in their given context,not according to a lexical concordance. It's a principle that Purvey,Luther,Tyndale and other strove for ....the sense,not individual words. Meaning has to be in phrases,sentences and longer units.

If accuracy is a goal then the meaning of the text,not the form is the aim. A faithful translation has to be not only faithful to the original,but to the audience.

 

[Yeshua1]

No,it does not.Every translation has to alter the form in order to reproduce the meaning. Even so-called literal translations have to alter the original form to express the meaning of the text.

Words are translated in their given context,not according to a lexical concordance. It's a principle that Purvey,Luther,Tyndale and other strove for ....the sense,not individual words. Meaning has to be in phrases,sentences and longer units.

If accuracy is a goal then the meaning of the text,not the form is the aim. A faithful translation has to be not only faithful to the original,but to the audience.

No, it has to be faithful to what was intended by the original authors, as to what it meant to those who read and heard it in their immediate setting!

what did it say and mean to those who tread romans in its original setting, in its historical contex?

 

[John of Japan]

No,it does not.Every translation has to alter the form in order to reproduce the meaning. Even so-called literal translations have to alter the original form to express the meaning of the text.

Words are translated in their given context,not according to a lexical concordance. It's a principle that Purvey,Luther,Tyndale and other strove for ....the sense,not individual words. Meaning has to be in phrases,sentences and longer units.

If accuracy is a goal then the meaning of the text,not the form is the aim. A faithful translation has to be not only faithful to the original,but to the audience.

Um, I don't think you are understanding the difference between syntax and semantics here. You're mixing them up. My statement was strictly about syntax. Lexical units without syntax are contextually meaningless.

 

[Yeshua1]

Um, I don't think you are understanding the difference between syntax and semantics here. You're mixing them up. My statement was strictly about syntax. Lexical units without syntax are contextually meaningless.

think that at times we can have a version stating what seems to make perfect sense to us today in modern culture/society, yet its NOT what would have been understood to be saying to those who first hear/read it inoriginal setting/contex!

 

[Rippon]

No,it does not.

I had said that form does not equal meaning.

Every translation has to alter the form in order to reproduce the meaning. Even so-called literal translations have to alter the original form to express the meaning of the text.

Do you agree with the above or not?

Words are translated in their given context,not according to a lexical concordance. It's a principle that Purvey,Luther,Tyndale and other strove for ....the sense,not individual words. Meaning has to be in phrases,sentences and longer units.

Do you agree or not?

If accuracy is a goal then the meaning of the text,not the form is the aim. A faithful translation has to be not only faithful to the original,but to the audience.

Do you agree or not?

Merely saying you believe in syntax does not anawer my questions.

 

[John of Japan]

I had said that form does not equal meaning.

And I have said that it does. :type:

Do you agree with the above or not?

This is too general a statement, too hard to quantify. The answer depends on the target language and what transformations are necessary to produce syntactically correct sentences as compared to the original.

Do you agree or not?

Yes, I agree, because it proves my point that grammatical forms carry meaning.

Do you agree or not?

I disagree.

Merely saying you believe in syntax does not anawer my questions.

What? :laugh: "Believe in syntax"???? That's a very strange statement. Syntax exists and the translator must deal with it. Period. It is impossible for the translator to translate if he doesn't "believe in syntax." There is no "believe," there is merely "translate."

This brings me to ask, do you know what syntax is?

 

[John of Japan]

think that at times we can have a version stating what seems to make perfect sense to us today in modern culture/society, yet its NOT what would have been understood to be saying to those who first hear/read it inoriginal setting/contex!

This view is called reader response theory or reader response criticism, and is the lynchpin of dynamic equivalence. I disagree wholeheartedly with it, since there is no way to know how the 1st century readers responded. I translate synax and semantics, not in view of imagined responses.

 

[Yeshua1]

This view is called reader response theory or reader response criticism, and is the lynchpin of dynamic equivalence. I disagree wholeheartedly with it, since there is no way to know how the 1st century readers responded. I translate synax and semantics, not in view of imagined responses.

Doesn't DE "read back" though into the txt what current understandings and viewpoints would be regarding the issues discussed?

For example, modern scholarship might view Male domination in the biblcal texts, and seek to "soften" it for female readers?

same way they also have for homosexuals, as in version like the"Queen james" edition?

 

[John of Japan]

Doesn't DE "read back" though into the txt what current understandings and viewpoints would be regarding the issues discussed?

For example, modern scholarship might view Male domination in the biblcal texts, and seek to "soften" it for female readers?

same way they also have for homosexuals, as in version like the"Queen james" edition?

DE translators may do that sometimes, but that is not taught in the books about DE by Nida and others.

 

[Rippon]

Every translation has to alter the form in order to reproduce the meaning. Even so-called literal translations have to alter the original form to express the meaning of the text.

And to this you replied that it was too general of a statement,too hard to quantify etc.

You as a translator have to alter the form of the original in order to convey a reasonable meaning across the languages. it's not a matter of being hard to quantify. It has to occur because Greek,for instance is very different than Japanese. You can't carry the form over intact.

If accuracy is a goal then the meaning of the text,not the form is the aim. A faithful translation has to be not only faithful to the original,but to the audience.

And you said merely that you disagreed with the above with no explanation. But accuracy does demand the meaning of a given text and not the form of the original. Equivalent meaning is the aim,not the form. Otherwise,in English at least,we would not have true translations but nonsensical interlinears. The versions that are hyped as being so literal are in-fact adhering to functionally-equivalent methodologies because the form has to be changed so often so that meaning is expressed.

 

[John of Japan]

You as a translator have to alter the form of the original in order to convey a reasonable meaning across the languages. it's not a matter of being hard to quantify. It has to occur because Greek,for instance is very different than Japanese. You can't carry the form over intact.

I've been waiting for someone to ask me in regards to the OP, what if the target language doesn't have a passive form? A scholar friend wrote me and said that the Coptic language has no passive form. It's even more complicated than that, because in Japanese the passive form is not completely equivalent to the Greek passive. For example, there is an honorific use to the Japanese passive.

Let me say here that the universal grammar theory of linguistics is relevant. Here is a definition: "universal grammar Traditionally of any system of grammatical categories, structures, rules, etc. seen as common to all languages. Thus one in which, e.g., all languages distinguish nouns and verbs, or all languages have rules for anaphora" (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, by P. H. Matthews, 421).

Here is an older (1967) definition: “universal grammar: The study of languages in general, and the general principles basic to the grammatical phenomena of all languages, without confining itself to any particular language” (Dictionary of Linguistics, by Mario Pei and Frank Gaynor, 224).

Therefore, translation of grammatical form is possible. The target language may not have a certain form that the original has, but it will have a way to express the meaning of the grammatical form of the original.

And you said merely that you disagreed with the above with no explanation. But accuracy does demand the meaning of a given text and not the form of the original. Equivalent meaning is the aim,not the form. Otherwise,in English at least,we would not have true translations but nonsensical interlinears. The versions that are hyped as being so literal are in-fact adhering to functionally-equivalent methodologies because the form has to be changed so often so that meaning is expressed.

When I say that form has meaning, I am talking about individual grammatical forms, not sentence order. The sentence order of a language will have significance in the form of nuance or style in that particular language, but such significance is usually non-transferable. On the other hand, generally speaking grammatical forms (noun, pronoun, active, passive, etc.) will have equivalents in the target language.

When this is not so, as in the Greek infinitive which has not parallel in Japanese, I look for the form in the target language which fulfills the same function and conveys the same meaning. In Japanese this may be a present verb followed by the word "koto" (行くこと = "to go") or what is called the "te form" of the verb (行って= "to go"). Simply because there is no parallel sentence structure from language to language does not mean that there are no grammatical equivalents.

 

[John of Japan]

Biblical justification for a theory of universal grammar:

1. We are made in God's image, and He communicates clearly with Mankind, indicating that we also can communicate clearly with one another.

2. Adam and Eve communicated with each other with language. Since they are the first ancestors, and all humans came from them, it follows that we all have the same capability to learn languages and communicate with them.

3. The same argument can be made from the history of Noah and his wife and family.

4. At the time of the tower of Babel, all people spoke the same language. God confused the languages at that time, meaning He gave new languages to various groups of individuals. This is borne out by the modern language families said to each come from a common ancestor, such as the Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, etc. (Note: Interestingly enough, Japanese is said to have no similar languages and is part of no language family, meaning it is probable that it may have been settled directly by people from Babel.)

5. At Pentecost, although the languages were miraculously given, they were clearly extant languages, and clear communication took place, including the Word of God. Truth was transported across the language barriers.

The implication for translation of the universal grammar theory are that there must be optimally equivalent grammatical and lexical units from language to language. Translation is not only possible, it is eminently so.