Sunday, February 25, 2007

Pre-Script: On the other hand

In the same introduction, the CEV looks at how it translates a psalm, effectively a poetic song of praise, moving away from a literal translation and from some of the poetic devices of the time to using more modern techniques. And it works brilliantly.
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Now why would I advocate this as good practice? For the exact same reasons as below. In the original Hebrew, the writer may be rhyming and using poetic devices, including rhythm to make the poem much more powerful as a result. All this is lost with a wooden literalistic rendering of the text. Now listen to how they take a literal translation, add the spice and in my view, slam-dunk the translation.
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NIV of Ps 29:3-4:
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The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
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And try to read these lines from the CEV without getting goosebumps
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The voice of the LORD echoes over the oceans.
The glorious LORD God thunders above the roar of the raging sea,
and his voice is mighty and marvelous.
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Awesome. Devastating. Evocative. You can almost hear the thunder in your head as you read. Praise-inspiring. They have captured the sense of the text perfectly.
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So between the two prescript posts here, the jury is out on the CEV.

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