Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)

I think religeous texts are almost always amongst the most difficult
things to translate. I remember hearing once about a missionary who
wanted to translate the bible into the local language, but this was
somewhere where they didn't have donkeys, horses or anything similar.
How do you translate the story of the birth of Jesus without mentioning
a donkey!?! You could translate it as "big four legged beast that
carries things" I suppose, but if you don't mention that these were
common place then readers not familiar with donkeys or horses etc might
assume that this beast is a miracle rather than something you see every
day. So you have to include way more than just one word just to get
across the basic idea of Mary riding on a donkey. The big problem is
that you have to be far truer to the original than normal. I sometimes
think that the Muslims and Jews were wise to just have their bibles
written in one language and not do translations at all.
 One thing I do often wonder is, given the fact that the bible has
already been translated into english, why don't they retranslate it into
modern english so everyone can easily understand it? At the moment it
can be quite a dense and difficult text for the average person to
follow. I guess actually I've answered my own question: no priesthood
wants to make itself partly redundant, so the bible will stay difficult
to follow so that priests are still needed to interpret it properly. I'm
sorry for being so cynical. But anyway....

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