Greek translation

[theonides]

My brother sent me five lines of Greek today and asked me to translate them for him. Apparently, two of his coworkers have been going around about the translation of these verses, and since I know Classical Greek, he thought he'd get my opinion. The text he sent is scanned below the cut.

Comments

double-entendres

[anonymous]

The Logos is obviously the traditional Stoic conception cum Aramaic Xianity, turned upside down for its Greek speaking audience. It is impossible to render in English as "word," yet so many translators just accept it at face value. I like the fact that Theonides suggested some very viable alternatives ("purpose" indicates an active entity as opposed to "word" is colourless and really means nothing!) here.

I cannot even begin to think about the _pros_ issue; I think Jerome's Latin translation uses _in verbum_ which is absurd (and belies his ignorance), but became the standard until Erasmus came along and woke up a number of Xians.

The Greek word _to phws_ in the last verse is a clever little double-entendre (reminding us again that John's original thought-world was definitely Hellenic, as opposed to Aramaic). Theonides uses the translation "man," which does not convey what the author intends--indeed, the paucity of English does not allow us to translate the passage as John intended. '_to phws_' is clearly (pun intended) also to mean "light" here (hence English "photograph," phosphorus," et al.)--hence the contrast between the _skotia_ and the obvious 'light emerging from the darkness' Xian religious crapola.

Just my two sesterces...

Re: double-entendres

[theonides]

It's true that puns rarely translate well. I noticed the meaning/connection with "light" when I was giving it an initial once over. I had considered a translation similar to "the light of men/mankind" to convey this, but after consulting my dictionary, I went with the more banal "man" since my brother was looking for a literal rather than poetic meaning.

Thank you for your input. I will consider this section further.