Me too, TC.

Metaphors are taste.

“As for 1 Timothy 1:19, in the translation I am working on into a language where there is no verb “shipwreck”, the rendering can be translated literally into English as “[they] sank their faith like a ship meeting a disaster”.

Peter, per 2 Cor 11:25 I think we should keep the nautical metaphor at 1 Tim 1:19.

Using metaphors is a part of every language. Metaphors add taste. I love them!

Of course, the Vulgate has it “Euroaquilo.” The curious thing is why that spelling for εὐρακύλων? Κύλων is not a very good transliteration of “Aquilo.”

And Κύλων (or the Latin transliterated Cylon) is also the name of the “Athenian noble who married the daughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, and with his help seized the Acropolis at Athens with a view to setting himself up as a tyrant (c.632 BC). ”

To solve the mysteries here, one needs to find an extant text where either the Greek phrases or the Latin phrases pre-date Luke’s Acts.

But then the other problem is translation. If Luke’s using Latin, or even a Greek-Latin hybrid, then why does the Vulgate have to do a weirder Latin than that (or is it a weirder Greek)? It always irks me that translators feel they can flatten out language. This happens with most English translations of John 1:42 in which there’s a Greek transliterated Hebrew name which Jesus replaces with an Aramaic name, which John transliterated into Greek, and also translates into Greek.

Willis Barnstone, who can’t stand the Christianized English transliterations of the transliterated Hebrew names into Greek in the NT works another way: he translates the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew names back into an English transliteration of the Hebrew names. Weird. But it marks how unmarked our English readings have become.

So here’s Barnstone’s John 1:42,

“He led Shimon to Yeshua.
Looking at him, Yeshua said,
‘You are Shimon, the son of Yohanan.
You will be called Kefa’
(which is translated Petros).”

I’d rather do it this way:

“He led Simon to Joshua.
Looking at him, Joshua said,
‘You are Simon, the son of John.
You will be called Kephas’
(which is translated Rocky).”

So back to Acts, if Luke is using Latin within his Greek, then I want to keep Latin (or an English-Latin hybrid) within my English: something like “Easterly-Aquilo.”

The fussiness about “Northeaster” is that with a capital “N”, the term is specifically used today to describe North Atlantic cold water cyclonic storms. Most of the translations I looked at used a capital “N” – the NRSV, if I recall correctly, had a small “n”. I’ll have to confirm that tonight when I get home, but it was the specific proper noun usage that I objected to.

I took “Euroclydon” as a transliteration of eurakylōn, which is listed in Strong’s for this verse. I agree that Gregale may be the correct term for more literal translations, or “a northeast wind” for more functional ones, especially if there isn’t any support for cyclonic winds in Luke’s account – thanks for the additional link.

But I note that according to Merriam-Webster, probably a more reliable source than Wikipedia, a northeaster is “1 : a strong northeast wind 2 … : a storm with northeast winds”, with no limitation to any one geographical area. So maybe this rendering is not so bad after all.

The KJV form “Euroclydon” is apparently a textual error or correction of the original eurakulon, i.,e. Euraquilo, for which you give the explanation. So why prefer “Euroclydon”, a form which means nothing except to KJV readers? And since Euraquilo means “east north east” and that wind direction fits the climate and geography, surely the best translation is something like “east north east wind”. That is if you don’t accept “Northeaster” on the basis of an artificially narrow definition. Or else go for Gregale, which seems to be the best modern counterpart name.

As for 1 Timothy 1:19, in the translation I am working on into a language where there is no verb “shipwreck”, the rendering can be translated literally into English as “[they] sank their faith like a ship meeting a disaster”.

Of course not all languages have nautical terminology, especially those of people living far from the sea. I once had the interesting experience of seeing evidence of the loss of the last working anchor in a whole country! This landlocked country has just one sizeable lake, and I took a trip on the only large boat on this lake. At one place on the boat there was a winch and a place where there obviously had been an anchor, I could even see its outline on the paintwork, but there was no anchor. Was there a word for “anchor” in the language of that country? If so, probably only a loan word.

So I’m not sure how much is actually being preserved of the ancient metaphors and how much is being translated into the language of the receiver audience. I’m just glad that the translators didn’t choose to use the colloquial “Nor’easter”!

Personally, I think presevered ancient metaphors add taste to the text. Perhaps, I’m adrift here.

On the topic of nautical translation, I’ve always been a fan of William Barclay’s translation of Hebrews 2:1 — For this reason, we must more eagerly anchor our lives to the truths that we have heard, so that we do not drift into sin.”

One thing I wondered about the 1 Timothy text when we were translating it last year is whether “shipwrecked” was a dead metaphor. It’s one of those things that is very hard to know about an ancient text. Especially with such a limited number of examples.