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Translating the Bible is a vexed task

economist.com

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Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#41

Post by Waterluvian »

joelhaasnoot wrote: post #39
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

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?

Also how do you translate concepts that were clearly known to the readers to modern times. Do you entrust that readers have someone to tell them what this would've meant, or do you adapt to something more apt in their language. For example in countries where they don't each bread made from wheat or that isn't a staple, daily food, what do you translate for bread?

In high school our Shakespeare books had the text on the left and explanations on the right. The explanations were mostly to deal with what you’re bringing up.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#42

Post by bentley »

mattigames wrote: post #36
bentley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of work in Bible translation over the millennia has been motivated by translators’ desire to make the most important document in history, the stuff of salvation and life itself, accessible to the common man. Luckily, there is room in the world for (and demand for) countless approaches to Biblical translation, from the hyper‐literal to the simple paraphrase. Any person who’s participated in a group Bible study (…

*what they believe it's the most important document in history (because most have been indoctrinated from a very young age to believe so)

I was describing these people’s motivation. It goes without saying that that’s what they believe.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#43

Post by samus »

mattigames wrote: post #36
bentley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of work in Bible translation over the millennia has been motivated by translators’ desire to make the most important document in history, the stuff of salvation and life itself, accessible to the common man. Luckily, there is room in the world for (and demand for) countless approaches to Biblical translation, from the hyper‐literal to the simple paraphrase. Any person who’s participated in a group Bible study (…

*what they believe it's the most important document in history (because most have been indoctrinated from a very young age to believe so)

Since a lot of people put a lot of faith in these texts, their importance is not just a mere belief.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#44

Post by Mikeb85 »

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient commentsry.

Jews have the Talmud and other commentaries, Muslims have hadiths, Orthodox and Catholic Christians have centuries of commentaries by saints, similarly Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and others all have many supporting texts, not just a single canonical one.

Yet Protestant Americans are looking for a "perfect" translation so that they can magically understand a text that was never meant to be a single text nevermind interpreted on its own. It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture but throw away commentary by saints, including those who lived through the councils that decided what is considered scripture.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#45

Post by samus »

peignoir wrote: post #17

Seems like a field where GPT could do a descent job

People have translated the Bible for hundreds of years now. They have interpreted, expounded and preached it for a way longer time already. The problems are interpretation details and questions that cannot be definitely answered because the texts were composed millenia ago. This is a field where GPT is truly redundant.

Also, since it was trained on modern-day texts, it is very ill-suited for this task. And there might not be enough ancient texts to properly train a large model that could be used to extract hidden knowledge.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#46

Post by mattigames »

bentley wrote: post #42
mattigames wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*what they believe it's the most important document in history (because most have been indoctrinated from a very young age to believe so)

I was describing these people’s motivation. It goes without saying that that’s what they believe.

No it doesn't go without saying, specially because it means the translations are extremely biased towards showing a positive view of the texts and towards translations likely to reinforce their existing believes.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#47

Post by simple-thoughts »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #34
icemelt8 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

entire islamic theology is based on Abraham and his actions, the rituals in the holy journey of Hajj and Umrah are all repeats of actions of Abraham and his family.

Yep it’s a very narrow focus on one person, and disregards the millennium of Judaic and Christian traditions that followed on from Abraham. In general, to my ears “Abrahamic religions” is a forced academic classification, and doesn’t point to any actual spiritual kinship shared between the religions thus classified.

Have you actually even met a Muslim? Most will consider Christian and Jews brothers in faith. There’s far more similarities than differences, contrasted with the local pantheistic religions Mohammad (PBUH) preached to replace.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#48

Post by joosters »

rippercushions wrote: post #7
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

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?

There are some 1500 hapax legomena in the Old Testament, means words that appear only once and, by extension, whose exact meaning is often unknown. How do you translate them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon

A famous example of which is 'daily' in 'give us this day our daily bread' (technically a 'dis legomenon' since it occurs twice, but since it is in identical passages, the repetition doesn't help) - it's something that's still said so frequently and yet we have no good way of knowing what the original word actually meant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiousios

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#49

Post by Mikeb85 »

wizofaus wrote: post #29

I'm more curious about the first word in that article - is "dodgy" becoming accepted as part of the US English vernacular now? It's particularly common in Aus English but I usually have to find alternatives when conversing with Usonians.

TIL dodgy isn't used much by Americans. Canadian here, we use it all the time.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#50

Post by beardyw »

bentley wrote: post #19
XorNot wrote: post #14

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"

A lot of work in Bible translation over the millennia has been motivated by translators’ desire to make the most important document in history, the stuff of salvation and life itself, accessible to the common man. Luckily, there is room in the world for (and demand for) countless approaches to Biblical translation, from the hyper‐literal to the simple paraphrase. Any person who’s participated in a group Bible study (…

The version I use is superior though ;)
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