The Bible Translator: Volume 26, Issue 3

An analysis of the Korean Bible of 1937 beginning with a historical study of the societal contexts into which the Bible was introduced. These structures are the reasons why Korean Christians are reluctant to have a new Bible translation. But there are other reasons to do a new translation: the word pictures associated with mythopoeic expressions are badly done in the present translation; linguistically impossible structures which produce distortion abound in the present work; forms derived from the Chinese Bible are often used; and the Bible is characterized by obscurity and unnaturalness. Examples are given. View Less

Translators make mistakes through not understanding the relations between language and psychological processes. Critiques the Behaviorist theory and advocates the relation of language to thought as developed by Lev Vygotsky. There are three concluding implications for translators: (1) different words may be related to the same concept and a single word may express a series of concepts; (2) the same information can be communicated in a variety of ways; (3) any discourse may be viewed as a communication event, not as a string of words. View Less

A review of the textual principles stated in a few modern translations, the French Jerusalem Bible, the NEB, the NAB and the Norwegian volume of selections from the OT indicates that the principles used are not different but the way the principles are emphasized is. Discusses a number of passages showing how the principles are put into practice in the four translations. A concluding section attempts to indicate some basic rules of translation based on the preceding study. This section stresses the preference for the second phase of the text development of the Hebrew OT rather than the Masoretic text which is corrupt in many places and cannot be regarded as basic or original text. The conclusions are based upon the Preliminary and Interim Reports. View Less

Although the second edition of this Greek Testament has established itself as a major work, makes 7 criticisms: (1) the apparatus is more restricted than, e.g., Nestle-Aland 25th (2) the reason for including certain minutiae among the variants is puzzling, therefore; (3) the number of manuscripts included to cite from is too large; (4) minuscules are erratically cited; (5) brackets are used, but inconsistently, so there is no firm criteria by which some readings are relegated to footnotes and some left in the text; (6) at other places brackets are used but with no reason given; and (7) the principles which could have resulted in an eclectic text are overthrown and Hort’s text is the basis of the work. View Less

In 1753 in a famous work, Bishop Lowth identified parallelism as a crucial factor in OT poetry. There is some evidence that a similar phenomenon exists in NT texts. Gives a number of examples which show that the form of the parallelism is different from that of the OT, more complicated and needing further discussion and debate. View Less

A summary of a doctoral thesis at Strasbourg in 1973 which examines the transformations called for in the process of translating into those languages which either have no passives or else do not have them in the same proportion as Greek does. The problem is examined in the Gospels because they are important for translating, they display a wide variety of constructions for presenting the passive and because they are synoptic books, some of the transformations made can be examined among the different gospels. Concludes that there may be as many as 18 such constructions for expressing the passive. View Less

A summary of the aims and methods of the working group which has been entrusted with the OT project. The members of the group are listed, the nature of the preliminary work to the sessions is defined and the purpose of all of the discussions: to recommend a working text to translators. The committee has aimed to establish the text at its second stage of development, right after the Babylonian exile. The methodological principles are described. They differ from those of earlier scholars in that they prefer difficult textual forms when there is a great chance that they are original and they regard emendations as unnecessary. View Less