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My “to-read” list is too long, so I haven’t actually read it, but personally I’m interested in “The Art of Bible Translation” by Robert Alter.
by maxlybbert 7y ago
My “to-read” list is too long, so I haven’t actually read it, but personally I’m interested in “The Art of Bible Translation” by Robert Alter.
- war1025 7y agoHeard an interview with this guy on NPR about a year ago [1]. He made some comment about how he tried to make it more poetic than most translations. Then proceeded to give several examples where his translation sounded distinctly more awkward to me than the text he was replacing. For example, replacing "anoint" with "moisten" and "soul" with "life breath". [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scholar-completes-3-000-page-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scho...
- maxlybbert 7y agoI don’t remember how I learned about that book at all. But I appreciate having another data point about the author. Thank you.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoUm "anoint" and "moisten" have very different meanings in English.
- jlos 7y agoRobert Altar's book "The Art of Biblical Poetry" is mandatory reading for understanding Old Testament poetry. Hebrew poetry is based primarily on parallelism, as opposed to meter or rhyming as in English. Wonderful part about that is that parallelism, as opposed to rhyming or word-plays, translates well across languages.
- maxlybbert 7y agoI’ll put that on my “to-read” list as well. Thank you.