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The Bible and Language Learning | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6425 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 49 of 84 26 April 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
You're simply wrong on this. The translations vary quite a lot in how much they suffer from 'translationese'. The thee/thou stuff you're sprinkling in your post is a simple artifact of the age of some translations into English, and the intentional echoing of that style by some more modern ones. Surely you wouldn't claim Shakespeare is translationese simply because it contains those terms? All else aside, what was translationese several centuries ago has had a deep impact on some languages (such as German), and there are also more recent translations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6245 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 50 of 84 26 April 2009 at 12:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Who can read and understand the holy texts in their original untranslated forms except those who study ancient languages like the Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek? Can the Hindus read the Vedas in the original Sanskrit form? Can the Englishmen understand the works of Chaucer - or any 14th century writer - without training? Can a common Japanese read and understand the Kojiki? Many Japanese cannot read even the literature of the 17th century! So how can people read and understand their holy texts which date back thousands years ago? [The sole exception is the Quran because today's common Arabs can read and understand most of it without the need to study an old language, and the Arabic language itself has not changed much over the 1400 years.] Here are some examples: Old English: Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, Si þin nama gehalgod. Modern English: Father ours, thou that art in heaven, Be thy name hallowed Note that I gave an example of Old English, and it's not the original language of the New Testament. How would it be in Koine Greek? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5885 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 51 of 84 26 April 2009 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||
How about literary and scholarly texts across that millennium and a half? How intelligible are they to an average educated Arab speaker of today? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5847 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 52 of 84 26 April 2009 at 2:46am | IP Logged | |||||
Can't they study the languages you mentioned? I wouldn't do it myself because this is way too much effort merely to read something that I'm only mildly interested in, but I think some religious people would be sufficiently interested.
Very interesting. Just another reason to learn Arabic. Thanks Hashimi. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6245 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 53 of 84 26 April 2009 at 2:52am | IP Logged | |||||
First, these are three verses from the Quran: Classical Arabic (transliterated): qala inni 'abdul-lahi aatanil-kitaba wa ja'alani nabiyya wa ja'alani mubarakan ayna ma kuntu wa awsani bil-salati waz-zakati ma dumtu Hayya wa barran biwalidati wa lam yaj'alni jabbaran shaqiyya Modern Arabic: qala inni 'abdul-lahi aatanil-kitaba wa ja'alani nabiyya wa ja'alani mubarakan ayna ma kuntu wa awsani bil-salati waz-zakati ma dumtu Hayya wa barran biwalidati wa lam yaj'alni jabbaran shaqiyya [Nothing changed over 1400 years! They are understood even to my little sister who is 10 years old.] As for literary and scholarly texts across that millennium and a half, personally, I read and understood the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (a book in sociology written in 1377) when I was in the 4th grade (elementary school.) If I rewrite that book, for example, in Modern Arabic, I'll not change anything in syntax or morphology, but I'll change few words and replace them with modern ones. Andy Freeman, a non-native Arabic speaker and a computational linguist, says that he can read witty entertainments or histories dating from about the 12th century on. ---
They can, but few people can do this. Dead lannguages are very difficult to study. Edited by Hashimi on 26 April 2009 at 3:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5885 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 54 of 84 26 April 2009 at 3:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Very interesting, Hashimi. I myself am reading the Muqaddimah in Spanish right now. I knew that written Arabic had been preserved relatively unchanged from the time of the Prophet, but not to such a degree as you describe. This makes learning it much more tempting indeed.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5910 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 55 of 84 26 April 2009 at 4:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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Theere's some interesting comments in this thread, but for now I'll just answer the original questions posed by zocurtis. Yes, I am a Christian and I have used die bybel as part of my study of Afrikaans, though I took a break from it this past week. Also, here is a podcast of someone reading the Bible in Afrikaans. I'm not ready to use the Bible for Finnish just yet, but if anyone is interested the 1992 Finnish translation can be read here and earlier translations are available at finbible.fi.
NB: The last two websites are in Finnish. Edited by mick33 on 26 April 2009 at 4:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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