From: Wayne Leman (wleman@mcn.net)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 14:13:53 EST
> Nice. I had tried that once too, and now that you've said it, I think
>(for now!) that I like it even better!
>
> As to "you shall not" versus "do not" -- you're saying htis because,
>well, people don't say *that*? And what do you think of contractions in
>formal translations?
Bart,
For any translation, whether formal or more colloquial, one needs to test
the wording with a range of speakers, including those who are naive with
regard to the content of the translation, to determine which forms are most
appropriate, whether or not there is comprehension of the forms (and if so,
*what* the comprehension is; sometimes it is surprisingly different from
what we intend it to be). Test uncontracted vs. contracted pronouns, asking
the test subjects which would sound better in formal writing. Standards are
changing rapidly for English formal, technical writing, as you may know. It
it now acceptable in much formal, technical writing to use "I", the personal
pronoun, instead of awkward circumlocutions such as "this writer" or "the
present researcher." Well, I hope we're (or we are!) still on topic for this
discussion list.
No translation should be released to the public until it has been tested by
a scientific sampling of the public, and revised according to the results
learned from that testing. Most English translations of the Bible have not
been so tested and we can see defects in them because of that lack. Exegetes
often have not been trained to do translation, and so need input from HOI
POLLOI to get their translations to be real English.
Wayne
--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:57 EDT