Saturday, February 09, 2019

Alter on translating the Bible

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Translating the Bible Against the Ancient Near Eastern Background (Robert Alter).
All translations of great works are of course no more than approximations of the original, in some places happy ones, in some necessarily imperfect. But respecting the sheer physicality of the Bible’s language together with a stylistic decorum appropriate to the Hebrew diction can help readers sense something of the world quite different from ours in which the Bible was created.
With lots of insightful examples.

For more on Professor Alter's recently completed translation of the Hebrew Bible, see here, here, here and links.

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