Buses in Israel have the following written over the priority seating reserved for the elderly: mipnei seivah takum. Though the first two words sound esoteric to adult Israeli speakers and are often incomprehensible to children, the line is, in my opinion, a beautiful nod to the holiness code of Leviticus: “Stand before the elderly.” Unfortunately,…
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The issue of contractions in English translations has come up again recently, so I thought a look at how contractions work in English might be a good idea. Spoken English Spoken languages tend to obey a general rule that less is more, or, more specifically, the shortest form possible is generally the only grammatical form.…
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I’ve only just glanced at the new CEB translation of Matthew (available on-line here), so I’ll have more organized and thorough thoughts soon, but as I was paging through it, I saw this: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judah during the reign of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. [2:1]…
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What could be easier than translating “yes” (nai) and “no” (ou)? Actually, “yes” and “no” are sometimes tricky, because they work differently in different languages. In particular, negative questions are a common source of trouble. For example, in response to “do you want ice cream?” the answer “no” indicates no desire for ice cream, and…
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Joel Berkowitz (in Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage) writes of the hubris of Yiddish theaters that promoted Yiddish productions of Shakespeare that were “translated and improved.”* Though we mock it now, I often think I see the same thing in Bible translations, in two related ways: 1. “Translators” want to make the general flavor…
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Not long ago, I asked about the merit of tailoring translations to children. When I starting reading about the new CEB translation, and in particular that “[t]he new Bible translation would be pitched at 7th-8th grade reading level (compare 11th-12th grade reading level for the NRSV),” I started thinking about what children’s translations and poor-readers’…
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The English phrase “term of art” is nicely self-referential, because it is one. A “term of art” is a term — a word or a phrase — that is used technically in a narrow context. It usually has nothing to do with “art,” except in the now antiquated sense in which “law,” “science,” etc. are…
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