scholarly journals «Vi in posek shteyt geshribn»: On the Problem of Translating Quotations from the Sacred Texts in Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman into Russian

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-197
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Kuznetsova
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Semantic Function ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Original Intention

The article focuses on the problem of translation of Biblical Hebrew (and some Aramaic) quotes in Sholem Aleichem’s works into Russian.A review of different translations into English and Hebrew is also included to show a broader context. Sholem Aleichem is one of the most frequently translated Yiddish writers and certainly the most translated into Russian, and translators face many peculiar challenges while working on his texts. One of those challenges is the usage of phrases and quotes from various languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Russian, Ukrainian, German, etc.). Each language has its own semantic function, and its presence is vital for comprehensive understanding of the work. Thus, quotes from the sacred texts of Judaism in Tevye the Dairyman have several functions: first of all, they create a comic effect, second, they reveal the protagonist’s relationships with God, and finally, they allow the author to show Tevye’s perception of events in the book without direct naming.The article describes different ways in which linguistic polyphony could be preserved, by analyzing the translations starting from the 1910s, when Sholem Aleichem himself advised the translators regarding the issue, to the Soviet translations that are still in print today. Inseparable from translation matters is the question of interpretation of Tevye as a character: thus,for instance, in the USSR his constant quoting from the Bible was interpreted as anti-clericalism and rebellion against religion.The article explains how different translation strategies influence the characters and the work in general, often simplifying or distorting the original intention.

Translating

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-278
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Section Deal ◽  
Theory Of Language

The three texts of this section deal with translation, a field where Meschonnic is of particular influence and importance. Meschonnic’s own experience of translating the Bible, and a very particular understanding of meaning-making procedures in biblical Hebrew, establishes in fact the basis for his theory. The exposure to the semantic accent system of biblical Hebrew allowed Meschonnic to develop a theory of language which saw meaning as residing not only in linguistic reference but in what he called a ‘serial semantics’: motivated forms of verbal patterning, chains of signifiers, prosodic contours, distributions of and connections between speech sounds and motifs across a longer text. He posits that, more than what a text says, it is what a text does that is to be translated: its force. The third text on translation then offers a demonstration of how Meschonnic applies the continuous of his theory of language to a text.

Between Boundaries, towards Decolonial Possibilities in a Feminist Classroom

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 229-249
Author(s):  
Fatima Seedat ◽  
Sarojini Nadar
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Assessment Task ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Bible

Abstract This paper theorises the teaching and learning of feminist approaches to the Bible and the Qurʾan in a Master’s course with a historically Christian focus. It draws on a critical review of an assessment task, and our pedagogical experiences as teachers, to consider how students made meaning within this decolonial pedagogical space, which explored feminist approaches to the two sacred texts. Our analysis shows, our work as teachers was to hold onto the tension in the space between two feminist approaches to sacred texts, and to not succumb to the pressure to release, trivialise or exacerbate that tension.

Translating the Biblical Hebrew WordNepheshin Light of New Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-166
Author(s):  
Richard Pleijel
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Hebrew Word ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
New Directions ◽  
New Research

In this paper, the translation of the Biblical Hebrew word nephesh is discussed in light of new research. The starting point for the paper is a 1976 article in The Bible Translator that discusses the translation of nephesh based on the idea that it is a monistic entity referring to human beings as such. It is shown that this view was most representative for the exegetical consensus of the time of the article. However, a fair amount of new research points out new directions for interpreting nephesh as an entity or essence that was perceived as being separable from the body. This is also confirmed by research on cognate ancient Near Eastern concepts. It is argued that this should affect our way of translating the word nephesh.

Early Christian Art

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Jensen ◽  
Lee Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Precious Metals ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Painted Panel ◽  
Complex Images

Most scholars agree that Christian art first appeared around the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd century. Among these earliest examples are the wall paintings and epitaphs found in the Roman catacombs. At first the iconography was primarily simple and symbolic (e.g., doves, anchors, boats, and praying figures). More complex images included the Good Shepherd with his sheep and representations from the Hebrew Bible, including Jonah, Noah, Daniel, and the Three Youths in the fiery furnace. By the end of the 3rd century, Christians had begun commissioning sarcophagi with relief carvings that depicted narrative episodes from the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Following the legalization of Christianity and the imperial support that following the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, Christian art was dramatically transformed in style, technique, context, and motifs. From the mid-4th through the end of the 6th centuries, Christians built and decorated churches and baptisteries; designed and made liturgical vessels; produced private devotional objects in gemstones, pottery, glass, ivory, fabric, and precious metals; painted panel portraits of their holy men and women; and began to illustrate their sacred texts. Older types and motifs, such as the Good Shepherd and Jonah, were gradually replaced by new iconography that emphasized the glory and triumph of Christianity over the traditional Roman gods. Along with the iconographic changes, new media emerged, in particular polychrome glass mosaic for walls, apses, and domes of church buildings.

scholarly journals Wole Soyinka’s The Road as an intertext

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-36
Author(s):  
Richard Oliseyenum Maledo ◽  
Emmanuel Ogheneakpobor Emama
Keyword(s):  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
External Sources ◽  
The Creation

Studies on African drama have shown the influences and the intertextual relations between African drama and European (Classical and Elizabethan) plays. It is also a known fact that African drama exhibits traces of African tradition and instances of textual relations with already existing oral and written texts. However, existing studies on Wole Soyinka’s The Road have tilted towards the usual literary interpretation or as a piece of theatrical performance with little attention paid to the intertextual nature of the text. Based on the challenges of these usual approaches to the study of literature by contemporary literary and cultural theories, this study adopts intertextual theory as a framework to examine Wole Soyinka’s The Road as an intertext showing traces of textual influences from oral and written external sources. The aim is to reveal the source texts from which the playwright draws in the creation of the text and to show how these sources contribute to the overall thematic significance of the play. Findings reveal that Soyinka draws extensively from Yorùbá oral sacred texts, the Bible, and his own earlier texts and that these sources contribute to the eclectic nature of the thematic preoccupation of the play. It is hoped that this has gone a long way to mitigate the obscure claim of structural and thematic incomprehensibility with which the play is associated.

scholarly journals Translation as a New Tool for Philosophizing the Dialectic between the National and the Global in the History of Revolutions: Germanizing the Bible, and Sinicizing Marxist Internationalism

Labyrinth ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Sinkwan Cheng
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Local Translation ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Global Reach

This paper uses Martin Luther and Mao Zedong's translation strategies to philosophize anew the dialectic between the national and the global in the history of revolutions. Luther and Mao each instigated a "revolution" by translating a universal faith into a vernacular; the end product in each case was the globalization of his vernacularized faith and the export of his local revolution all over the world.By vernacularizing a universal faith, Luther and Mao respectively inaugurated a new national idiom, a new national identity and, in the case of Mao, founded a new nation. The far more intriguing phenomenon which I identify – and on which I seek to make my most original contributions is: Protestantism and Maoism developed global reach not despite, but because of, their insistence on a local translation-articulation of a universalist ideology.My paper attends to both the similarities and differences between Luther and Mao.  

Three ‘Intentions’ to Respect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Reception History ◽  
Faith Community ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Biblical Texts

The inspired books of the Bible should be interpreted integrally. This involves respecting not only the ‘intention’ of the human authors who composed the sacred texts (the intentio auctoris), to the extent that this can be established, but also the ‘intention’ of the readers who take up the texts (the intentio legentis) and the ‘intention’ of the text itself (the intentio textus ipsius). We must respect what the original authors wanted to communicate but also acknowledge the insights of subsequent readers and the multiple meanings that emerge from the texts’ reception history. The historical-critical method, which studies the genesis and authorial meaning of our biblical texts, is necessary but insufficient. Where it lapses into an exegesis that separates itself from the faith community and purports to be impartial and ‘objective’, it may yield some specific results but hardly valuable insights into the inspired Scriptures as a whole.

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