What is the nature of those "secrets" of a language, those elements that cannot be translated into another language?
Or: What leads a translator to say the following? "The highest ideal of a translation from Greek [or any other language, SPM] is achieved when the reader flings it impatiently into the fire, and begins patiently to learn the language for himself." (P. Vellacott in the intro to Aeschylus: The Oresteian Trilogy, Penguin Classics)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Nice quotation. I'm 86% convinced that we need to start teaching Greek and Hebrew (and Aramaic) in our churches.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have any answers. I have spent much of the last 8 months intensely studying Hebrew poetry. It puzzles me why God chose to write a quarter (or so) of the Bible in the most difficult genre of a language foreign to most of the world. Just when I feel like I'm starting to get the feel of some of it, it escapes me.