The Funny Thing About What Words Mean
The funny thing about what words mean is how hard it is to notice when they mean more than one thing, as, for example, “funny.” The way I’m using it here the word doesn’t mean “humorous” but, rather, “odd.”
Two thousand years hence, will scholars be arguing over whether “funny” should be translated into the then-equivalent of “humorous” or the then-equivalent of “odd”? Will they even know enough to ask the question?
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About
God Didn’t Say That (@GodDidntSayThat) is an online forum for discussing the Bible and its translations, mistranslations, interpretations, and misinterpretations.
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman is the chief translator for the ten-volume series My People’s Prayer Book, author of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, and editor of The Unabridged Bible. Writing under “J.M. Hoffman,” he is author of the thriller series The Warwick Files. He holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics and has taught at Brandeis University and HUC-JIR in New York City. He presents widely to churches, synagogues, and other groups. more…
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My thriller series: The Warwick Files.
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I have always been frustrated by the whole “translate the same word the same way everywhere” impulse. Seems like sometimes the Bible gets treated as a document that defies the normal rules of language.
Sometimes making sure the same Greek work stays the same English word is the only way to preserve word plays and other poetic devices. This is part of the challenge of translation. Sometimes accuracy calls for using the same word in translation, sometimes different words in different contexts.
The hardest case is when the translation calls for both.
They will look to popular 20th century scholars like Dr. Seuss.
Jeff