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To Bible or not to Bible? | ||
Tags: Translation | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 17 of 25 17 April 2013 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Biblical translations may be one of the only things available in some of the less common languages, but I still think it depends on whether you enjoy using the Bible to study. There usually isn't a compelling reason to study an obscure language, so studying it would mainly be used to satisfy one's linguistic curiosity. If it doesn't do that in an enjoyable way, then why not choose another language? Edited by Talib on 17 April 2013 at 2:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 18 of 25 17 April 2013 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm happy about all the concerns presented and the attempts to keep the discussion
linguistically. I've reflected upon this a lot and came to the following conclusions: a) Being a diglossic person (Brazilian Portuguese) I think I won't have much trouble spotting archaic syntax. I can always refer back to the Portuguese translation to be sure. b) Vocabulary is always vocabulary. Even at those more archaic sentences there are real,concrete words still used. c) The uniqueness about the Bible is that I'm already familiarized with portions of its text even though I haven't actually read it front to back. I really dislike reviewing and I wouldn't read a book a second time just for practicing languages. No Harry Potter. So, the Bible works as a compromise about the unfamiliar and the well-know texts. I've tried Le Petit Prince with Georgian and I wasn't familiar enough with a text so as to take profit of reading it in an unfamiliar language, EVEN with a translation. d) The Bible has a Portuguese translation and it's a book for which I don't really care about the originals. Le Petit Prince also had a Portuguese translation, but I would contradict myself if I read it Portuguese/Georgian after studying French so hard for being able to read the French classics in the original. The same goes for Jules Verne's books and several others I got in Georgian, for example. e) We're talking about less-commonly learned languages. Even though I have loads of Georgian books, I still can't attack them and make a good use of them even with translations, as Le Petit Prince showed me. As for Papiamento, I don't have books on it. I plan to buy some when I go to Aruba and Curaçao, that accounts for the reading skills. As for listening, there's plenty of videos out there. I could always use news items but I find them boring for daily routine study and prefer to leave them for once in a while. I work better when I have a book from which I can read a few pages each day and thus have a deadline, I find it more motivating. f) The Bible is long and even if I decide to read the Pentateuco in Georgian, there's plenty of books left for me to read in Tetun or Amharic. That's not the case with Le Petit Prince. g) I don't fear being converted and I can always skip parts I feel more uncomfortable with =D h) I live in a country where it doesn't matter if you're seen with a Bible or not, and that's not quite the point, because I'll be using PDFs in split-screen on a desktop. In the case of Georgian, people won't have an idea what the text is about =D So, I'm going to wait for a few weeks before I make a test, as currently I'm already busy with other resources. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5373 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 19 of 25 17 April 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Bible is a great resource for all the reasons listed above... particularly for the more obscure languages.
I have three parallel Bibles in English/Spanish. And they are at different levels. The New Life version is very very basic and has a vocabulary limited to 850 words (excluding names and places). The Dios Habla Hoy is a great translation and is fairly easy to read for an intermediate... and it has a free audiobook too. The New International Version is more challenging to read. One thing to consider with parallel texts is to consider the translating sources of each language. For my Spanish parallel Bibles I find the New Life and New International have translations very similar and it makes it very easy to use the English to determine unknown prases or words. The New Life Spanish version was translated directly from the English version. I believe the NVI was also. This makes using it for language learning wonderful. However, my DHH uses the Good News translation as the English and it is much more different than the DHH because the DHH was obviously translated from some other version. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 20 of 25 17 April 2013 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that I would be more inclined towards using the Bible if I were to learn the Biblical languages like Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic to access the source texts. However, if I were learning Spanish, for example, I would much rather use an English translation of Don Quixote or a translation of an easier piece of Spanish literature to help decipher the original text rather than use a Spanish translation of the Bible that was translated from an English translation and perhaps from other translations before being translated from the oldest Biblical manuscripts. That is because I can't help but feel that I would get a more authentic taste for the culture of the target language by accessing the culture on its own terms and from its own tradition of texts. Edited by Talib on 17 April 2013 at 10:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 21 of 25 17 April 2013 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Litterature in the target language is an ultimate goal, Talib. In the meantime, though, I still think a familiar text would be a more efficient tool, at least for me. For example, it will take me much time till I can read native Georgian even in the few cases when I have an English translation.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 22 of 25 17 April 2013 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
You have a good point. If you are already familiar with the text, it should be easier. In that regard, since I am personally more familiar with the Koran than I am with the Bible, I could likewise consider using it as an intermediate step to access the literature of another language. Edited by Talib on 17 April 2013 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4426 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 23 of 25 19 April 2013 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Just a note on the archaic language - you can get Bibles with modern day speech. I understand that this might be a
little more difficult for uncommon languages, but it should still exist. It's not all forsooth and behooven and thy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5539 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 24 of 25 20 April 2013 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I May have missed this so forgive me if I did. While the bible, for good or for bad, has been translated into
more languages than any other text you will, especially if you're using one of the tens if not hundrads of English translations, run into lots of mistranslations. This us not just true of individual words, but whole concepts. Now if you're trying to learn biblical Hebrew or Aramaic there wouldn't be a major issue if your L1 is English (the same may be true for Italian and a handful of other languages as well) because of ths sheer amount of theological and scholarly published debate on the matter. If you, on the other hand, are learning Tagalog from a bible the likelihood is that the Tagalog translation wasn't an attempt at one from the origional text but from a Spanish translation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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