Re: CHAT: Ave Maria

At 06:52 02.7.2000 +0100, Raymond Brown wrote:

>While the choice of 'hail' or 'rejoice' for the opening word depends on the
>predilection of the translator, the translation of the 2nd word is
>influenced by the religious standpoint of the translator.
Might a -- linguistically speaking -- "neutral" translation be possible?

There are similar problems with some key Buddhist terms like _buddha_
itself, _dharma_ and _praj~naa_.  They are differently translated depending
on whether the translator is favorable to Buddhism or not, how influenced
they are by Western philosophical and religious parlance etc.  It is usual
to render _buddha_ by "enlightened", but "awakened" is more literal, and
more in line with Buddhist understanding of the term.  The Tibetan
translators based their term on a verb that could mean both "wake up" and
"become sober" -- entirely appropriate IMHO.  Whether _dharma_ is
translated as _law_ or _teaching_ is largely a question of Hinayaana or
Mahayaana leanings -- apart from the fact that it can mean "element" too,
since the root meaning is "to uphold".  _Praj~naa_, finally is usu.
rendered "wisdom", which IMHO is to trite (wisdom is what old men claim to
possess, which rather is _j~naana_ in Sanskrit, the  influence is probably
from Plato's _sophia_, but the English "wisdom" and German "Weisheit" have
become rather empty.  Thus I prefer "knowledge".

Well, I guess that any translation of texts to which philosophical and
religious values are attached is rife with these difficulties!

>.  In Greek, if the noun is
>definite, the definite article must be repeated before any attributive
>adjective or adjectival phrase that follows the noun (if it comes before
>the noun it is simply put between the def. article & the noun).  This is
>what we find here, tho since the noun is vocative, there is no def. article
>before the noun itself, e.g.:
>  pater hEmOn ho  en tois ouranois
>father of-us the in the  heavens
I always liked that feature of Greek.  The textbook example (here at least) is:
         "Paul wrote to the congregation in Corinth"
which is ambiguous since we -- unlike Paul himself! -- cant say(*):
         "Paul wrote to the congregation the in Corinth"
or
         "Paul wrote to the in Corinth congregation"
to specify whose being in Corinth is relevant.

(* Well, we can, actually, since I just did! :-)

OK I know English can say "of Corinth", but Swedish is really stuck in
ambiguity here, unless we use an adjective or compound "the Corinthian('s)".



/BP
--
  B.Philip Jonsson  mailto:melroch@mail.com
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