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Pater Noster (purely linguistically)

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 1, 2004, 22:54
Hi!

I'm currently translating the Pater Noster into Qthen|gai.  I have
some problems with the translation and I'd appreciate some comments.
I did not come further than two lines yet.  The main problems I
have are of two natures:

  a) The polysynthetic nature of Qthen|gai forces me to
     break down the concepts in the text.  Words like 'holy'
     or 'heaven' cannot be atomic concepts in Qthen|gai,
     they must be derived from more basic concepts.

  b) I don't really seem to understand the text. :-)

The problems in detail.

  1) Pater noster qui es in caelis.
     Our father, which art in heaven.

     - Would it be appropriate to translate 'heaven' with 'divine world'?
     - Maybe 'divine transcendental world', but that might be redundant?

And now the main problem:

  2) Sanctificetur nomen tuum.
     Hallowed be thy name.

     - How to translate 'to hallow'?  Again, it will be a derived
       word.  Probably from 'holy'.  But again, 'holy' will probably
       have to be derived from 'god'.

     - What does 'holy' mean?  After some thoughts and some web search,
       I found at least five meanings here:

       http://dict.die.net/holy/
       (This website gathers and cites definitions.)

       Summarised:

         1. belonging to      \
         2. derived from       - a divine power
         3. associated with   /

         4. set apart to the service or worship of god,
            reserved from profane and common use

         5. spiritually whole and sound, of unimpaired innocence
            and virtue, free from sinful affections, pure in heart,
            godly, pious, irreproachable, guiltless,
            acceptable to God.

       I found these quite enlightening, and I think the meaning of
       the above line would be

         optative(be.reserved.from.profane.use(thy name))

Thoughts?  Corrections?  Help!

Bye,
  Henrik

Replies

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
John Cowan <jcowan@...>