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Regarding “hard choices” when translating: what about not making them? If the goal isn’t to editorialize on purpose, could one just write, “[young girl|virgin]” when faced with what the “correct” translation is supposed to be?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should they be translated then? Leaving then unchanged would communicate the fact that the word has no direct translation. English has borrowed and invented lots of words which have no direct meaning, they just are a subtle way to express a concept - e.g. "grok"
"Grok" isn't really a good example - it was invented by a recent English speaker and used quite enough that it was clear enough what it meant (I'm not sure if Heinlein explained it outright but I don't believe he objected to various definitions published. Further if you do consider it a word in another language it translates reasonably directly into "understand intuitively" in standard English, not much different to…
It has no meaning and yet it seems to fit in a lot of places. It’s almost like a parity correction: we’re missing data here, just fill in the blank based on the context.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Islam is generally considered an Abrahamic religion. There is a lot of continuity; the (very very) short version of the Islam perspective is "Abraham explained God's will to us, then Jesus was sent by God to explain God's will better, and then finally God sent Mohammed and he communicated God's will perfectly". Three time's the charm I guess? Many of the figures you know from the Bible make their appearance in the Qu…
Yep, I know that, but it doesn’t offer anything else than a claim to authenticity, by posing as a continuation, while the previous revelations are then discarded. The mentions of Biblical persons and events, as I hinted in the previous comment, are cultural rather than theological, and can’t be used to establish theological continuity, no matter how hard the Ismaelite genealogy is pressed.
“Traduttore, traditore” (“translator, you traitor!”). Translating ancient texts is hard enough given the complex historical and cultural contexts. When it comes to religious texts, though, the level of complexity grows exponentially, especially given how their contexts widen. On an unrelated note, this always vexes me: > By contrast, the two faiths’ cousin—Christianity I get how one can see a relation between Judaism…
The stories are the same, the people are closer than Italians and Israelis, and saying Christianity is Abrahamic because Rome killed a guy who reneged most of jewish literal intepretation then elevated him as a divine figure is just as silly...
Rather superficial article about the subject. Whole books are written about the subject or why one translation is better than another. (A quick search will find you people telling you not to use the King James translation.) The article does not even touch upon culture things, such like how to deal with a translation for a culture where pigs are kept as pets or cattle, while in the old testament they are considered as…
Most of them are bad reasons - for example, one very popular criticism is the claim that KJV invented the usage of the word "unicorn" in the Bible, and it's actually a wild ox. But it was traditionally translated that way from the time of the Latin Vulgate, and nobody knows for sure what a re'em is. [Ed - it turns out the Septuagint also uses the word μονοκερως, so it goes back even further.) So while it seems reasonable to personally disagree with the choice of word, it's going too far to declare it to be wrong when a) nobody knows what the referent is for sure b) the two pre-existing "canonical" translations have used your equivalent translation for ~1800 years.
You can find people explaining why not to use any translation; people are, uh, religious about their chosen translation and the KJV is the old guy you've got to tear down. But any mainstream translation is probably OK. You certainly miss out on a lot of poetry and historical citations if you skip out on the KJV, and there's very few actual problems with it. Probably the fairest criticism is the general decline in reading ability means that many people find the KJV hard to read, and the NKJV in that regard is only a minor improvement for modern audiences.
“Traduttore, traditore” (“translator, you traitor!”). Translating ancient texts is hard enough given the complex historical and cultural contexts. When it comes to religious texts, though, the level of complexity grows exponentially, especially given how their contexts widen. On an unrelated note, this always vexes me: > By contrast, the two faiths’ cousin—Christianity I get how one can see a relation between Judaism…
Christianity's belief in the divinity of Jesus is shared by neither other religion. The Jewish jurist Maimonides ruled that Christians were idol worshipers because of their belief in the trinity and Muslims were not (Menachem Meiri rules otherwise).
But more than that, in terms of practice, Muslims and Jews share a great deal. Praying in a certain direction. Praying several times a day. Specific dietary requirements, including banning pork.
And Jewish and Islamic thinkers were in constant dialogue, I'm not sure why anyone could say there's no philosophical continuity.
Seems like a field where GPT could do a descent job
Seems like a field where GPT could do a descent job
“Traduttore, traditore” (“translator, you traitor!”). Translating ancient texts is hard enough given the complex historical and cultural contexts. When it comes to religious texts, though, the level of complexity grows exponentially, especially given how their contexts widen. On an unrelated note, this always vexes me: > By contrast, the two faiths’ cousin—Christianity I get how one can see a relation between Judaism…