http://goddidntsaythat.com/2009/11/15/qa-on-the-sons-of-gods/ Bible Translations and Mistranslations Sun, 12 Feb 2012 02:54:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://goddidntsaythat.com/2009/11/15/qa-on-the-sons-of-gods/#comment-676 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:21:25 +0000 http://goddidntsaythat.com/?p=1037#comment-676 ‘Hope for the best’ has become an idiom in English – perhaps I heard in those words: ‘Hope for the good’. The myriad of questions related to culture, policy, religion, and language that we encounter while translating is part of the long process of informing our faith. When I began translating the psalms 3 years ago, I used for a while Martin Rosenberg and Bernard Zlotowitz’s 1999 translation. They quickly taught me that what my uninformed faith had taken as unambiguous was sometimes comprised of words whose meaning no one could decipher. In all cases my translations are first a reaching out to an unknown author then secondly to known but sometimes uncommunicative colleagues – hoping indeed for joy across time and psychological space – both of which are often seemingly impermeable.

]]> http://goddidntsaythat.com/2009/11/15/qa-on-the-sons-of-gods/#comment-674 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:00:48 +0000 http://goddidntsaythat.com/?p=1037#comment-674 Just to be clear: I don’t think that in general “Hope for the best” is a great translation strategy. Rather, it’s an admission of defeat. But this is the rare case where I think an educated guess is as good as we’re going to get.

]]> http://goddidntsaythat.com/2009/11/15/qa-on-the-sons-of-gods/#comment-671 Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:38:39 +0000 http://goddidntsaythat.com/?p=1037#comment-671 I love it – thank you. God didn’t say that – and hope for the best. That’s is a lovely laid back style of loving the word.

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