Re: Translation, Anglophiles and Ancient Texts
James H. Vellenga (jhv0@mailhost.viewlogic.com)
Mon, 13 Oct 1997 08:42:27 -0400 (EDT)
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 04:29:16 -0400
> From: Noel Maddy <ncm@biostat.hfh.edu>
>
> <snip>
>
> I would rather say that translation into English teaches me more about
> communication than it does about English or Greek. For me, translation
> into English followed by evaluation of the translation's accuracy and
> effectiveness in communicating the original idea forces me to think at
> the basic conceptual level rather than in Greek or English terms.
>
>
> Noel Maddy (nmaddy1@biostat.hfh.edu)
>
I would give this a hearty second! Trying to compare words,
syntaxes, and even sentences in two separate languages teaches
you not only about the less familiar language, but also about
the more familiar.
The first language I really seriously studied was German, and
I remember the kind of paradigm shift that came with understanding
that the apparently reflexive "Ich fuehle mich" was equivalent
(more or less) to the apparently intransitive English "I feel"
-- as in "I feel wonderful".
Regards,
Jim Vellenga
"We all work with partial information."