From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Fri Sep 22 2000 - 12:36:24 EDT
on 09/22/00 7:39 AM, Bart Ehrman wrote:
> Ignatius was in a hurry and, frankly, had a few other things on his
> mind. Whatever the reasons, his letters are frequently, uh, rushed. I
> have a BIG question about what to do with them. Does the translator work
> to make sense of the thoughts Ignatius was expressing, and correct his
> grammar in order to do so? Or does s/he leave the sundry inconcinnities
> (and mistakes) to give a sense of the "tone" of the letters?
Bart,
What are your objectives for this translation? Who is your target audience?
Are you writing for someone reading the Greek text and using the English as
a "help" or are you writing for English readers only?
I have used the Loeb series frequently and it is at times difficult to
detect the answer to this question. Some of the English translations are not
literal enough to be of much assistance when you are working in the Greek
text.
Since I don't know who your intended readership is, I will not propose a
solution to your problem.
One of the pleasures of reading ancient literature in translation is
experiencing the temporal and cultural "distance" between the ancient author
and the (post) modern reader. This "distance" is obscured or totally lost by
rendering an ancient text into contemporary street idioms. I don't think
there is any danger of you doing that with Ignatius.
Everett Fox's "The Five Books of Moses" has gone a long way toward making
English translations of the bible respectable tools for serious readers
again after some of us had more or less given up hope on English
translations due to the popularity of Eugene Peterson and the NIV.
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
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