[Multilingual Monday] Lost in translation

[aadroma]

I was very unsure why I had even gone to Shabbat services this Saturday, but I'm glad I did, as it gave me the inspiration to write this article and to pursue other phenomenon like it.

This past Saturday's Torah reading was in Deuteronomy, and discussed unclean animals.

יב וְזֶה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-תֹאכְלוּ מֵהֶם: הַנֶּשֶׁר וְהַפֶּרֶס, וְהָעָזְנִיָּה

Comments

[cpratt]

C'mon, man, give us a translation we can work with

[aadroma]

when say that a cormorant isn't a cormorant but rather an owl, why?

Most likely because these are the only instances in Hebrew where you'd find these words, and thus there's no other context to tell you what this word means. Or, the same word may appear elsewhere but with an apparently different meaning, throwing the assumed meaning into question.

Sure, we can look at the Latin and the Greek, but both of these are merely translations of the Hebrew, which would mean that they would have to make the same educated guesses as the English.

And yeah, the difference between and osprey or a hoopoe might be minor, but between a swan and a bat??? Or a mole and a salamder?? I find it funny that, as specific as the Hebrew text is, it's also simultaneously vague. The translation of the Torah I have at our temple leaves the uncertain names untranslated in the English text, which was the first time I'd ever seen that ...

[cpratt]

Right, but in modern Hebrew, right? It's possible the meaning's changed over the last two or three thousand years, hence the suggestion to check older translations done long before modern language usages...

I also learned that the hoopoe is the state bird of Israel. Who knew? (And who knew that it might have been called a 'lapwing' at some point in the past?)

Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[aadroma]

Hehehe, the Torah's IN Biblical Hebrew... It's as far back as you can conceivably get for this text. AFAIK there IS no translation into Modern Hebrew (outside of explanatory footnotes), and the guesses here are as to what the words ORIGINALLY meant, NOT how they're interpreted in modern-day Israel. Debate about how to interpret these words as well as a number of passages has been going on for as long as there has been Torah commentary, and even in the days of Rashi a millenium ago this text was unclear.

Re: Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[cpratt]

If the modern Hebrew word is nothing to do with the biblical Hebrew word, then yes, you're stuck... so you go looking for contemporaneous texts, if any (e.g. other books dating back to about the same time), to give you a clue; if not, then you start looking at early translations to see if they make it any more clear; and if not, then I suppose you can either make something up, go with others' previous translations, speculate as best you can given what birds were common in the areas inhabited by the tribes that are presumed to have written that passage (or, if borrowed from the neighbors, check out Sumeria or Egypt) and go with one of them, see if you can find a pattern (the birds are named in groups, so it's possible that there's a commonality among the members of a particular group), etc. Lots of possibilities here - including why any of us are still arguing over ancient laundry lists of birds you aren't supposed to eat. I mean, they left out the ortolan - how accurate do you think this list really is? :)

Re: Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[aadroma]

Modern and Biblical Hebrew aren't total strangers, certainly, and MH is BASED on BH. However, interpretations of words had been filtered through two millenia of meaning changes, influences from other languages, isolation, etc. So it doesn't help -- some words in MH have nearly the OPPOSITE meaning of the SAME WORD in BH,

I, personally, would try to track down anything in Aramaic, as it's not only a close linguistic neighbor, but would have been translated sooner than, say, Latin. Though I'm not sure such texts exist, or if Aramaic would have a 1:1 correlation in terms like this.

I admit, I used the birds merely as an example since it was, after all, my muse for this piece. But there are plenty of other instances where the original Hebrew is nowhere near as clear as the translations, leading to other interpretations of OT scripture, and that I find fascinating.

Re: Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[cpratt]

Well, yes, exactly: when I read the King James Bible, I don't understand most of it, and that's nowhere even near as old as the original Hebrew Bible itself, so I can't understand how anyone could read the original and have any idea what it means without some kind of translation; I was (foolishly, I guess) thinking that there would at least be some distant echo of biblical Hebrew in modern Hebrew that would make it easier in places, but I guess not.

And yes, Aramaic. Definitely.

Ultimately, I suppose I always ask myself "Is this really worth knowing?" and then quickly answer "no, not really." It's of historical interest, yes, but as a practical subject... not so much. And yes, other instances may be more compelling to believers, but if you're not down with Abraham and his posses, then...

Re: Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[aadroma]

I try not to make the mistake of assuming that things in Modern = things in Biblical. I shouldn't make them sound like two unrelated languages because that's not the case. Much of Modern's vocab comes from Biblical or adjustments thereof for more modern concepts. Grammatically Modern is very simplified over Bibical Hebrew, leaving a lot of of its more complex forms behind. Modern is like Bibical lite, if I had to make a comparison. :: laugh :: Also, one can't expect every word to the same meaning and use as it did 3,000 years ago -- this is true in any language

Re: Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[cpratt]

I also totally forgot that you might want to check out Mahomet's pastiche and see if any similar birds snuck in there too...