The winner’s wreath
A wilderness of words
Deeds of doom

I’d like to look at a few more passages along these lines.

Are you still going to do a series yourself sometime?

If your comparison is on conjectural translation, then I’d really like to see the NEB and Jerusalem Bible included. Then again, the NEB and JB are older (40-50 years old) and probably less relevant to a modern comparison.

I’ll be very interested to see what translations you pick for your DE comparison this coming fall.

Then could this literary approach also be seen as a sort of hyper-extended dynamic equivalency but limited from being a paraphrase?

Not that I know of (other than the My Comments feature that links to other WP blogs) – that was the one thing really annoying about WordPress.com blogs compared to Blogger. When I switched to my own hosted blog, that was the first plug-in I looked for.

I get the impression that it’s more literary in nature than it is in structure, while still preserving the essential meaning.

Yes, more importance is placed on translating meaning through natural idioms and literary devices of the receiver language than on trying to approximate the original language texts. It may be an impossible task, but it’s been fascinating to explore translation philosophies beyond the “literal is best” mantra I grew up with.

I’m still trying to get a grasp on natural equivalence because it’s a new term for me. I get the impression that it’s more literary in nature than it is in structure, while still preserving the essential meaning.

My larger goal and hope is for an English language Bible that carries the same semantic weight and meaning as the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts, but uses idiomatic English literary devices rather than trying to literally translate the types of syntactical relationships you’ve describe.

This would undoubtedly be a different text from a formal word-for-word perspective, but the same semantic meaning and complexity would be produced through what I’ve previously termed “literary equivalence“, that which the REB seems to call “natural equivalence” in the quote above.

Using 3 for the letter aiyin with its ancient G/K-sound, this Hebrew idiom, B’3or SHinai, is a pun on the Hebrew word B’QoSHi which means “barely, hardly, with difficulty.” If translating into a language that does not have this idiom, should one change the original to “barely (escaped)” before translating?

When Joseph’s brothers arrived in Egypt, they did not recognize Joseph. One reason is that he spoke with them through an interpreter (Hebrew haMa:LiTZ). This word occurs only one time in Tanakh, in this story. So the question is: what is the relationship between haMaLiTZ and its meaning (to interpret). I think the answer is based on the fact that the Egyptian language was written with hieroglyphics
(Hebrew TZeLeM = picture; in Israeli Hebrew, maTZLeMah = camera). To translate from Egyptian script to any other language is to un-picture, hence the reversal of TZeLeM to Ma:LiTZ.

Lot’s wife turned into “a pillar of salt” (Hebrew NaTZiB MeLaX, using X for het), a rather harsh punishment for merely looking BACKWARDS when told to not do so. Actually we have to look at this phrase backwards to understand that she suffered a stroke / thrombosis < Greek throm = trama + bos < Hebrew BoTZ = mud. She became paralyzed and couldn’t talk or move, as if stuck in the mud (due to mud in the veins ?). NaTZiB is a reversal of BoTZeN = like mud. MeLaX is a reversal of XaLaM = to be strong, healthy. She became frail and weak. The modern Hebrew word for stroke/apoplexy is SHaBaTZ = caused by/result of BoTZ = mud. Should Hebrew NaTZiB MeLaX be translated as thrombosis or stroke?

Best regards,
Israel “izzy” Cohen
cohen.izzy@gmail.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/