The Cultural Conditioning o f Biblical Translation
Tadeusz Szczerbowski
Abstract
The paper analyzes several fragments of the Bible (Luke 17, 371 Luke 11,31 Luke 21, 14) in 12 languages (Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Polish, Czech, English, Ger[1]man, French, Italian, Spanish, Kiriwina). The Greek word for ‘eagle (Luke 17, 37) is replaced in many languages by ‘vulture’, e.g. Wherever there is a dead body, the vultures will gather (Today’s English Version). The reason is that eagle’ cannot appear in a negative context when its semantic connotation is positive. If there is no name for hyponyms ‘eagle’ and ‘vulture’, translators choose a hyperonym 'big bird’, an example being the Kiriwina mluveka. Hyperonymic translation is also characteristic of Luke 11, 3. Cf. Give us day by day the food we need (Today's English Version) and Give us each day our daily bread (The New English Bible). The reason for the change is that many people (even in Europe!) pre[1]fer Miisli, cereal, popcorn, pizza, cheeseburger, hamburger, chips etc. to bread. The English make up your mind (Luke 21, 14) contains the word mind, but the Greek original word is KapSloc ‘heart’. The users of exotic languages mention a different word, such as stomach or ‘belly’ in Kiriwina. Many contemporary translators do not use idio[1]matic expression, cf. the French Soyez do
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Tadeusz SzczerbowskiStatistics
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