The CEB blog has an interesting post about reading levels. In particular, Paul Franklyn claims that “[r]eading measurements are a measure of the writer’s clarity.” The CEB, he claims, aims for a 7th-8th grade reading level not because of their readers’ intelligence, but because the editors of the CEB wanted to create a translation that…
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The question of how much original linguistic structure should be preserved in a translation has come up twice recently — on BBB and on Bill Mounce’s blog. Bill Mounce notes that most people’s gut-reaction is that, “[a]n accurate translation is … one that reflects the grammar of the Greek and Hebrew.” (Dr. Mounce seems to…
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A classic bit of self-contradictory writing advice goes back to William Safire in the 1970s: “Always pick on the correct idiom.” In English, “pick on” means to annoy, and the right phrasing here is “pick” (which means “choose”). What makes his example work is that the meaning of “pick on” doesn’t come from the meanings…
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Give Ear At BBB, Wayne notes the oddity of the English phrase “give ear” for the Hebrew he’ezin. I think it can be useful to look at what went wrong here. The Root of the Problem Hebrew has at least two words for “hear/listen.” The first is shama. We find it, for example, in the…
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I’ve just returned from my summer break, so I’ll be posting regularly again and also catching up on the questions from the About page. I’ll start with Rabbi Morton Kaplan, who asks simply, “What is the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton?” I’ve already explained a bit of the background. I have more information in my…
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Nowadays, translators usually try to figure out what a word originally meant before they translate it. But translation hasn’t always worked that way. For example, a passage in the (mid-first-millennium) Talmud explains the Hebrew word sechvi. The story, in the part of the Talmud known as Rosh Hashanah 26a, explains that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish…
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Still following up on my question about accuracy and choosing Bible translations, and by way of answering my question about whether it’s okay if people choose what the Bible is, it occurs to me that music might be a useful comparison. Many, many parts of the Bible have been set to music, and the options…
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I recently asked how people choose a Bible translation. (And I have more here.) One interesting (though entirely predictable) result was that some people prefer more than one translation: the NLT for “readability,” for example, but the NET for “accuracy,” or the NASB for use in formal settings. Even people who only have one preferred…
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The Dictionary The dictionary can be double edged sword, used either to understand or wielded to confuse. In another forum, a KJVO proponent defended the KJV translation “the voice of the turtle” (for the Hebrew kol ha-tor) as accurately representing a bird call in Song of Songs. His reasoning was that “turtledove” is listed as…
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Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
