Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)

Hi!

Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> writes:
>...
> IMO it is best to keep as close as possible to the original and as
> literal as you can without doing violence to the language.
Ok, that's a good way, I think.  I will do this if the meaning is not
shifted by the translation.  If it has to be shifted, e.g. because my
language has several words where the source language had only one, I
will select the one that *I* think is appropriate.  That's
interpretation, of course.  In the example of 'heaven', I will choose
to translate 'divine world', because Qthen|gai has two words for the
the word in Greek, namely 'sky' and 'heaven'.  I will use 'heaven',
because 'sky' would shift the meaning.

> If you are translating from Latin means you are translating a translation,
>   i.e. you are partaking in a "relay"  :)
My problem is that there seem to be no translators for Qthen|gai that
are able to read Greek.  Is there is good glossed version?  (For the
Babel text I once translated, I had a good source of his kind found
via Langmaker.)

> The Greek has:
> Pater he:mo:n ho  en tois ouranois
> Father of-us  the in the skies.
> "our Father in the skies"
Yeah, glosses like this help *a lot*!  Thanks!

> Presumably Qthen|gai has a word for the 'blue stuff, usually covered with
> clouds in these northern climes' above us. If it can be made plural, then
> the translation is more literal.
But it would mean something different then.  As I understand it, the
Greek word above means 'heaven' and 'sky'.  Qthen|gai has both, so
I'll use 'heaven'.

> The Latin is subjunctive which, among other things, can express a desire
> or wish (optative) or can be used as a 3rd person imperative, which is
> _not_ the same as the optative. In other words the Latin is ambiguous.
>
> The Greek has:
> hagiasthe:to:                             to  onoma sou.
> made-holy-AORIST.PASSIVE-3SING.IMPERATIVE the name of-you
Great!  Thanks.  So it *is* imperative.  I'll use imperative then.

> Greek, unlike Latin, has subjunctive, optative and imperative moods for
> 3rd person. I know this has been discussed before on this list, but
> whatever is said, the simple fact is that the Greek is *imperative_*
Here, I will stick closely to the original, because Qthen|gai support
this natively, too.

> 'Aorist' BTW denotes _aspect_, not tense - it is the aspect that is
> _unmarked_ with regard to duration, incompleteness or completeness etc.
Aha.  I read that *one* of the possible meanings was 'timeless'.
Qthen|gai has aorist, too, which is a tense and means 'is, was and
will be'.  If there is a less confusing gloss, please tell me.  In any
case, Qthen|gai's aorist does not seem to be appropriate given your
explanation.  'unmarked' wrt. aspect would be morphologically zero in
Qthen|gai, which is what I chose here.

> _hagiasthe:to:_ most certainly does not express a wish - 'may your name be
> made holy' 'I want your name to be made holy' etc. That is expressed in
> Greek with the optative mood. The Greek has no-nonsense imperative: it is
> to be made holy!
Ok!  Very helpful explanations. :-)

> _ALL_ the verbs, except "lead", are imperatives in Greek. Not only
> "hallowed be" but also "come", "be done", "give", "forgive" and "deliver"
> are all aorist imperatives.
Ah.

>...
> the prayer, it is clearly a negative imperative.
Ok.

> > _Amen_, which means 'let it be so' but is usually untranslated.
> Well, yes - the word is Hebrew, and it is left untranslated in Greek!
I don't have initial vowels nor [m] or [E]/[e].  What was the precise
pronunciation (if known) in Hebrew?  Assuming /amEn/ or something
similar, the closest would be /haN@n@/ in Qthen|gai.  Weird.

Do some languages translate this?  Because another problem is that
Qthen|gai has no interjections (yet?) and *all* words start with a
fixed one- or two-syllable preamble for evidence, mood, case and
class.  I doubt words without that would be grammatical.

Using the classifier |\|\ (voiceless lateral click, silent or
fricative release) with the strange gloss 'hyper', which is used for
all super-natural and transcendental concepts plus predicative case,
we'd get

   |\|\@haN@n@ for Amen (with some tones added for spicyness).

Well...  Borrowing is not really supported by Qthen|gai.

>...
> mera:)_ "the coming day". That is: "give us bread for the coming day" -
> whether that is today or tomorrow will depend up whether the prayer is
> said in the morning or the evening  :)
Ah, also very enlightening!  I'll try my best.

> Not in the Greek scriptures it ain't. Indeed the very *same* verb is used
> in the Septuagint version of Genesis 1:3 as in the the 3rd petition of the
> Lord's Prayer:
> genethe:to: pho:s - "Let there be light"
> genethe:to: to thele:ma sou - "Your will be done"
Helpful!  I did not know.

> _genthe:to:_ is that aorist imperative again! It is derived from the verb
> _gignesthai_ "to come into being, to be produced, to be made". The root of
> this verb is -gn- ~ -gen- ~ -gon- (ablaut grades).
That's one of the few Greek verbs that I recognise in most forms:
egeneto, gignomai...  Only I never know whether theta or tau or eta or
espilon or omega or omikron.  I should learn some Greek.

> Umm - it seems to me that you have strayed way beyond the bounds of purely
> linguistic considerations here!
>
> If Qthen|gai is so 'modern' that it is entirely secular and has no concept
> of 'the divine' at all then clearly you have problems!
Yes, I noticed myself and changed that. :-) Of course there is a
concept of 'divine', but I lost the track when trying to figure out
the translation.  Currently, the 'holy' I use is derived as
'use'+'divine'+'benefactive'+'only' = 'to be used (benefactively) for
divine purposes only'.

The 'benefactive' affix seems superfluous, but implements 'for _'.
Without it, it would mean 'to be a divine tool only' or 'the divine
using/usage/tool' (also as a verb, which is hard to translate).

> Quite - _hagios_ meant "devoted to the gods", "set apart for the gods" -
> it was rather like the Polynesian word 'tapu' ("taboo").
Ok, then my current translation is quite close, I think.

> Is that so? Then those that have "food" are paraphrases, not translations.
I found it in a Chinese translation.

> > Is it important for the
> > message of that line?  I thought I understood that line...
>
> Did you? Good luck with the translation    ;)
Thanks! :-)

And thanks for the comments, they are great! :-)

**Henrik

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