Re: [lojban] Translating the Bible

[Pierre Abbat <phma@bezitopo.org>]

On Thursday, March 27, 2014 22:08:53 Sebastian wrote:
> Ok, nice.
> So I think the first thing to decide is what perspective we would like to
> have when we're interpreting/translating the Bible. Every kind of church
> have their own opinion about how to interpret different things, and they
> translate in accordance with their own beliefs. The Bible is also probably
> the most quoted work in the history. What's the impact if the lojbanic
> community later is translating works where the Bible is quoted? Which
> version does the work in that case refer to? How have Biblical concepts
> developed historically? How does people now and in the past understand
> these concepts? I'm just saying that if we're constructing new lujvos and
> fu'ivlas for important concepts in the Bible, that's quite normative, is
> representing just a certain point of view and might influence later
> lojbanic translations. Should we even call our translation the Bible?
> Shouldn't we recognize it's origin and pay more attention to the Jewish
> Tradition, and consider the Tanakh (Old Testament) as a work separated from
> the New Testament? And how do we reason when tertau, single brivla or whole
> phrases/sentences are meant to be interpreted metaphorically? Do we have to
> mark every metaphorical construction with {pe'a}? Or what about idiomatic
> expressions/"dead metaphors"? I think our translation should be close to
> how the work was interpreted at the time it was written. And I think we
> should translate expressions like "the ones who urinate on the wall" as {ro
> le prenu poi pincyvi'i re'o [?] lo bitmu} or similar rather than {ro nanmu}
> even if this might offend some Christians. Ok, I just think we should think
> about things like this before starting the translation process. What's the
> purpose. To be a literal translation of an important historical literal
> work and/or to be a lojbanic version of the canonical text of some religion
> or something else? Just think about it.

That's a lot of questions, some of which may need to be answered on a case-by-
case basis. Variant translations (which may be influenced by variant 
doctrines), like variants in the manuscripts, can be put in footnotes.

Each book of the Bible is in a separate file. The file structure doesn't care if 
the book before Matthew is Malachi or 2 Chronicles.

I think that the Jewish tradition should be paid attention to and that the New 
Testament should be interpreted accordingly. There's a lot of stuff in Paul's 
letters that's easy to interpret the other way. But remember that he was a 
student of Gamaliel, was a temporary Nazirite, used Yom Kippur as a reference 
point when explaining the danger of a boat trip, encouraged believers to 
celebrate Passover, and called himself a Pharisee long after conversion.

Pierre
-- 
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci

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