tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 03 11:41:11 1995
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Re: Strange New World Book
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Strange New World Book
- Date: Fri, 3 Mar 1995 14:41:08 -0500
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> (message from Wouter Slegers on Fri, 3 Mar 1995 13:14:26 -0500)
>Date: Fri, 3 Mar 1995 13:14:26 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: Wouter Slegers <[email protected]>
>< >I beg to differ!
>< >The Klingon bible is translated from AN english version (a rather well
>< >known I believe), which is a translation of the original Greek (I
>< >hope).
><
>< Um, not entirely. I, for one, translate the Bible from its original Hebrew
>< (not Greek; I'm doing the Hebrew Bible). Nick Nicholas works from the
>< Greek. Jonathan van Hoose (sp?) is also a Greek-speaker, and Kevin Wilson
>< has some familiarity in all the original languages of the Bible. True, we
>< can't hope to find many people who can manage ancient tongues *and*
>< Klingon, so I understand Kevin is recommending that a particular well-known
>< English version be used (probably a Finnish one or whatever could be used
>< by a Finnish translator... if we had any)... but the editors (listed above)
>< all get final looks, and we can read the original.
><
>Mmmm your saying you are still translating the bible from different
>languages (Hebrew and Greek).
Um, of course we're translating it from different languages. The Bible was
*WRITTEN* in different languages. Weird how that works out. The Bible is
written in Hebrew, Aramaic (the Hebrew Bible) and Greek (the New
Testament). Those are the oldest texts for their respective parts. We
can't expect everyone to know all those languages, so we permit people to
use translations and filter them through people who *do* know the
originals. I don't really see how you can expect us to do better, short of
having only translations from original texts.
> And even if you weren't, you going to
>lose a lot of grammer-constructions when translating from one language
>to another, so the idea of learning Klingon in your own language via
>the bible isn't feasable anyhow...
Well, yes, we'll lose grammar constructions. That's why languages are
different. If they were all the same grammar, they'd be codes of one
another. Losing grammar-constructions (and replacing them with other ones)
is the very *nature* of translation. It's what it means.
I don't know that I could really expect someone to *learn* Klingon from a
Bible translation. Certainly not as your first primer. But An
intermediate/advanced student could use it as Roger suggested; as a book he
could look at in Klingon and also have a text in his native language not
too hard to find, for comparison. Not an interlinear translation, mind
you, but *something* to compare.
~mark