From: Phil Long (plong@gbcol.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 26 2000 - 11:09:45 EST
> She has a green thumb.
> He kicked the bucket.
> Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.
As you rightly explain, these are more "figures of speech" that idioms...but my question/comment
may head off in another direction. Can you distinguish between a Figure of Speech and Euphemistic
language? An example might be the use of "he is asleep" for "he is dead." It seems to me that
these sorts of things cannot be translated as strict literal phrases.
Two situations may arise. There may be some cultures that do not understand sleep = dead, so their
own cultural Figure of Speech (idiom) must be used. A second problem is when a literal phrase is
offensive in a culture and it usually "idiomized," referred to in a FoS. The translator has to be
aware of how the biblical FoS comes across in English, and must choose to translate more or less
literally. The Hebrew Bible is especially full of colorful language that is lost in translation,
and rightly so.
Phillip J. Long
Asst. Prof. Bible & Greek
Grace Bible College
Grand Rapids, MI
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