[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.

[muckefuck]

Kafka's most famous novella was written just under a century ago, yet confusion about its subject abounds. The most fitting English version of "ungeheures Ungeziefer" is "monstrous vermin" and this is in fact the translation preferred by Wyllie and Neugroschel, among others. But the best-known edition in the US is that of the Muirs and they opted instead for "gigantic insect". So despite the fact that Kafka himself never even identifies the taxonomic class of the creature he's describing let alone the species, most Americans will confidently tell you hat Gregor Samsa became a "cockroach".

[cpratt]

The publication of the first English translation created an alternate universe in which Herr Samsa is in fact a giant cockroach. Sadly, a century later, most of us think he's actually a shitty mp3 player.

[muckefuck]

Fortunately, the Turkish World Festival taught me the truth, which is that it's actually a tasty meat-filled pastry.

[cpratt]

And here I was thinking it was a sly reference to the Samsa of Novi Pazar referenced at some length in Gravity's Rainbow

[didiseven]

You mean I've been avoiding eating tasty ospray for no good reason???