Re: Conlang Website

On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 22:25:59 -0400 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes:
> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > I have a Good News Bible, which is so colloquial sometimes it
> worries
> > me.  I really should acquire a NSRV copy.
>
> I have both of those, as well as the New International Version and a
> King James Version, which I love just for the beautiful 16th century
> English.  My NRSV is the New Oxford Annotated version, which my
> pastor
> jokingly calls the "Cheat Sheet Bible" in our Bible studies.  :-)
I had an NRSV once, but I had to "donate" it to the library when someone
stole _The World's Major Languages_ when I checked it out.  And I really
need that dang book.  All I have is a cheap paperback New American Bible
(a bible with the Deuterocanonical books of the Catholic Church), but
it's a looser translation than I care for.  Online, you can download in
HTML or .txt format a King James Version with the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha;
you can also find the Revised Standard Version (which is probably my
favorite, and it's the most ecumenical version out there).  I have the
Vulgate, a composite Greek New Testament (Textus Receptus, Byzantine
Majority Text, and a couple others), and the Douay-Rheims Version, which
is to Catholics what the KJV is to Protestants.

ObConlang: What approaches do you take (or plan to take) on translation
of literature, secular or sacred?  I ask because there are basically two
ways of translating the Bible, the Qur'an, the Vedas and what not.  You
have *literal* translation, which preserves the text the most but can be
confusing as it doesn't explain certain idiomatic expressions (especially
if you're translating Hebrew, Sanskrit or Chinese into English or
Spanish).  Then you have *liberal* translations which are easier to read
but are often tainted with the translator's (-s') interpretations of the
text.

And maybe someday I'll have a New Testament in Tech.

> > I can imagine.  I actually found the Old Testament more
> interesting,
> > because I read it more as history than theology.
>
> The books of Kings I found very intriguing.  All that war and
> political
> intrigue.  :-)
Genesis interests me the most, since it does deal with ancient history
and legend.  One of my concultures in progress is the nation of Techia...
about 10,000 years ago and in their original homeland, in and around
modern Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya.

According to native legend, Nimrod (the Cushite who conquered Mesopotamia
and built the Tower of Babel) was a Techian.  But bear in mind that
Nimrod is the name of a Sumerian or Akkadian deity, and Cush may not have
been Africa in this case -- could've been what would later be Elam (and
today, southwestern Iran).

Another thing: I've read that the Elamites became the Dravidians, the
Hurrians the North Caucasians, and we all know about the Hittites being
the first Indo-Europeans.  Also, if I'm not mistaken, sons and grandsons
of Japheth (again, in Genesis) include Gomer > Celts, Javan > Greeks,
Madai > Medes and Persians, Ashkenaz > Scythians and maybe Germans,
Meshech > Georgians, or maybe the original founders of Moscow...

DaW.