Bible translations and Targumim.
The importance of Bible translations and the extent to which translations are also interpretations is often underappreciated[1]. To a major extent this is because the uninitiated often assume that competent translation is simply the natural result of a good working knowledge of the original and destination language coupled with understanding of the subject matter . Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is one thing to understand a word; it is another one to find its equivalent in another tongue. It is one matter to know the idiom or a turn of a phrase, it is quite another to bring all its nuances out in another language. Add to this the complexity or Biblical writing, its terseness and multiple meanings and the weight of thousands years of commentary and you begin to gain a glimmer of the great complexities involved. Given these challenges, it is remarkable that accurate and authoritative translations exist in the first place; for some of them one cannot but invoke Ruach Hakodesh as the main ingredient in their success.
The following are some of the difficulties that a translator faces[2].
1.Untranslatable words.
Some words simply do not have an equivalent in the tongue of translation. Puns and lay on words are nearly impossible to convey in another language.
Proper names and names of palces that often possess certain meaning in the original, loose in in translation, or lead to confusion. What is the English speaker to make of King James' two thousand “baths” of Solomon’s molten sea (Kings I 7,26)?
2. Words and concepts peculiar to a certain civilizations.
Some concepts that no longer exists in modern intelelcutal universe are impossible to properly translate. Even if , spirit or weltshaung have traveled unchanged among contemporary languages, many concepts remain bound to the original langauge because what they express is peculiar to the originating cultures. Every Jew know what is meant by eishet chail; a pure and charitable woma of ability, faithfully attending to her household and family, rising early and toiling whole day through so that her husband and children may have their necessities. But when in Proverbs 31,10 it is translated as virtuous woman, none of this shading is expressed. The same is true of such Hebrew concepts as cherem (hallowing a city to destruction), or for that matter faith (emuna) which certainly means something quite different in the original context than what it means in English.
3.Literal versus expositional
The translator must choose whether to follow the original as closely as the destination language allows, even at the expense of sounding stilted or unnatural, or go for readability at the expense of accuracy. The ideal translation must not turn into commentary but neither should it be so approximate as to disrespect the holiness of its source.
4.The uncertainty of the sense
Very simple – there remain many places where meaning is not entirely clear or agreed upon.As an example consider the Song of Deborah or the 68th Psalm or innumerable passages in Job; a reader of a translation often has not the slightest suspicion of the complexity of possible and competing meanings. The poet Immanuel of Rome (c.1261–c.1328) in his Hebrew imitation of Dante's Divine Comedy has all the commentators, headed by Radak, summoned to expound the eights and the sixtieth Psalm. Not surprisingly, they experience major difficulties and disagreements. Of the two concluding verses of the thirty-sixths chapter of Job, the commentators enumerate some thirty different explanations. How does a translator deal with this? Does he choose to consistently follow a particular commentary in every instance or does he choose and pick? Based on what criteria?
5.No translation can encompass multiple meanings.
In the case of Scripture, no translation can give expression or refer to the multiple possible and coexistent meanings, shadings or nuances. The expressivity and self-referencing of the Biblical Hebrew cannot even begin to be encompassed in other languages, perhaps the most serious impediment to satisfactory translation of Tanach.
[1] “This may be divided into linguistic and contextual exegesis…Linguistic exegesis involves grammatical identification of all words (especially forms of the verbs and nouns) in source languages as well as their semantic interpretation. …In a way all forms of exegesis might be called “contextual exegesis” because the translators’ concept of context was wider than ours. They referred to the relationship between the words not only in their immediate but also in remote context. Furthermore, the translation may contain any idea the source called to mind.. Tov E. Tov, “The Septuagint”; in M.J. Mulder, ed., Mikra (Assen, 1988.
[2] FollowingM. L. Margolis, The story of Bible translations, JPS, Philadelphia, 1943
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