tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post2303907705379927515..comments2023-10-20T07:28:50.948-07:00Comments on Better Bibles Blog: Vir et VirissaWayne Lemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024771201561767893noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-556099574984140212007-10-27T05:13:00.000-07:002007-10-27T05:13:00.000-07:00Thanks for clarifying free translation or literal ...Thanks for clarifying free translation or literal and word play (with Luther as an example).<BR/><BR/>Carson's "The Question of Translation" is a talk she gave in 2005 at Columbia University (with Alexander Nehamas, whose talk was the same title). Seems that her subtitle was "Variations on the right to remain silent" and she allowed Columbia to post most of her transcript at <A HREF="http://heymancenter.com/eventsmaterials/20050309speech_carson.pdf" REL="nofollow">http://heymancenter.com<BR/>/eventsmaterials<BR/>/20050309speech_carson.pdf</A>.<BR/><BR/>(PS: The conference organizers gave this announcement:<BR/><BR/>"Synopsis:<BR/>Carson and Nehamas will discuss the principled limitations of translation, what it omits and what it distorts. They will also look at the political effects of these limitations, examining, as an example, the skewed translation of Joan of Arc's testimony and how it was used in her own trial, ultimately condemning her to death.")J. K. Gaylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07600312868663460988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-48064218494587679572007-10-26T16:28:00.000-07:002007-10-26T16:28:00.000-07:00J.K. It seems that Symmachus and Aquila have been ...J.K. <BR/><BR/>It seems that Symmachus and Aquila have been lumped together in the quote from Barnstone. Here is the little I know on <A HREF="http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_trans_metzger2.html" REL="nofollow">Symmachus.</A> <BR/><BR/>Is "The Question of Translation" a book or essay by Carson? <BR/><BR/>I do think that word play makes a translation literary. It is interesting to note that there is no particular correspondence between a version translating word play and being either literal or dynamic equivalence. For example, Luther's translation is fairly free but it maintains the word play also.Suzanne McCarthyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07033350578895908993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-125747283431776202007-10-26T09:41:00.000-07:002007-10-26T09:41:00.000-07:00The Heidl source is helpful. Thanks. I can see S...The Heidl source is helpful. Thanks. I can see Symmachus as "idiomatic" (and perhaps unwittingly so).<BR/><BR/>Are you familiar with Willis Barnstone's conception of "literary"? There's a very much different characterization of Symmachus by Barnstone in his history / theory / practice book, <I>The Poetics of Translation</I>. Barnstone writes:<BR/><BR/><I>Here are some situations where equivalence is not only secondary but scarcely existent, and where the translator may be unaware the equivalence has been banished. Rigidly literal translation that omits connotative meaning may doggedly assume equivalence, but equivalence is not there. The extreme paradigm concerns the Bibles in Greek by Aquila and Symmachus, who in their radically literal translations created a translation language, without regard to equivalence. In their attempt at literal replication, they achieve neither replication nor equivalence. the extreme literality of gloss, crib, and marginal lexicon edges into unintelligibility rather than equivalence.</I><BR/><BR/>Do you think Barnstone paints Symmachus with too broad a brushstroke? (You should read how he characterizes Augustine). <BR/><BR/>Or: you say "<I>Symmachus has already used </I>andris<I> from </I>aner<I>. . . The LXX does not reproduce the word play but uses </I>gune<I> and </I>aner<I>.</I>" Is it this particular Symmachus word play (in contrast with LXX) that makes "Symmachus . . . known as an idiomatic but literary translator"? <BR/><BR/><BR/>---------------<BR/><BR/>One reason I'm so interested in this is I'm working on a new translation of Aristotle's <I>Rhetoric</I>. Among rhetoricians today, the "best" translation to date is George A. Kennedy's (1991, and revised 2007). Kennedy claims it's the most rhetorical translation of all, and that philosophers and classicists who've translated before have tried to ignore how they've used (if banished) methods of rhetoric criticism in translation, such as "<I>enthymeme</I>." My contention is that Kennedy's translation is ironically the most philosophical, the most "literal" in Willis's sense, the most masculinistic, the most Aristotelian. Willis's sense of "literal" includes "transliteral" although the latter is my term, not his. <BR/><BR/>Hence, I'm translating by letting Sappho's fragmented literary poetic rhetoric translate Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric. It's "person above logic" as the late Kenneth Pike (a genius teacher of mine) would say. It's the "artistic translation theory [that] is a view of language as 'person-centered' or multidimensional (220)" that Louis Kelly describes (in contrast to the traditional "object-centered" theories of Aristotle, a particularly the translation theory of Cicero we have been "stuck" with) in <I>The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West</I>. It's the approach Anne Carson takes and speaks of (in "The Question of Translation"), when she says:<BR/><BR/><I>Metaphysical silence happens inside words themselves. And its intentions are harder to define. Every translator knows the point where one language cannot be translated into another.</I> (1)<BR/><BR/>and, Carson adds:<BR/><BR/><I>I was trained to strive for exactness and to believe that rigorous knowledge of the world without any residue is possible for us. This residue, which does not exist - just to think of it refreshes me. To think of its position, how it shares its position with drenched layers of nothing, to think of its motion, how it can never stop moving because I am in motion with it, to think of its tone of voice, which is casual (in fact it forgets my existence almost immediately) but every so often betrays a sort of raw pity I don't understand, to think of its shadow, which is cast by nothing and so has no death in it (or very little) – to think of these things is like a crack of light showing under the door of a room where I've been locked for years.</I> (12)J. K. Gaylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07600312868663460988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-55267338788020934282007-10-24T15:38:00.000-07:002007-10-24T15:38:00.000-07:00I made up the "literary" attribution for Symmachus...I made up the "literary" attribution for Symmachus - he is usually described as idiomatic. <BR/><BR/>Although this verse is not a problem in English, it is interesting to see how translators over the centuries have tackled it.<BR/><BR/>If you follow the Heidl link, there is more info.Suzanne McCarthyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07033350578895908993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-64096249915779050842007-10-24T14:08:00.000-07:002007-10-24T14:08:00.000-07:00Good catch of the Wycliff translator's miss! And ...Good catch of the Wycliff translator's miss! And thanks for all the comparative notes. I'm really interested in the translator choices of Augustine and Symmachus (especially vs LXX). Who is it that classifies Symmachus as "an idiomatic but literary translator"? AND, thank you so much for sharing the results of your $20, 30 minute photo session! What great work, and helpful publication! We all need to do more of this, Suzanne.J. K. Gaylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07600312868663460988noreply@blogger.com