Comments on bulbulistan: literalese

Congratulations to the award! Interesting blog! I´...

2010-05-14T21:29:20.021+02:00

Congratulations to the award!
Interesting blog! I´m Swedish myself but I run a Spanish podcast, don Gerardo de Suecia on this address:
http://turbeng.wordpress.com/ I have English and Swedish translations of many episodes.
Bienvenidos, Welcome, Välkommen!

There is one interesting book on this subject: htt...

2010-05-10T12:49:41.327+02:00

There is one interesting book on this subject:
http://www.dingir.cz/tri_ceske_jubilejni_bible.shtml

We have a German Bible the text of which "fol...

2010-04-28T15:16:17.068+02:00

We have a German Bible the text of which "follows the historical version of 1912". That, in turn, is apparently one of Luther's versions in modern spelling. It's atrocious, with thoroughly bizarre genitive constructions like des Todes sterben "to die death's" that I can't imagine have ever existed in German. Some passages are unreadable.

Thanks for your post and the previous comments. An...

2010-04-19T22:42:24.413+02:00

Thanks for your post and the previous comments. Another example is the way that the Aramaic Targums in general are translated from the Hebrew Tanakh. In general the syntax of the Aramaic Targums, but especially the Aramaic Peshitta Tanakh, follows the Hebrew very closely, in some cases copying unusual Hebrew words. Also, often the KJV copies the Hebrew and Greek very closely.

Gothic, don't forget Gothic. All the Gothic w...

2010-04-19T07:12:39.718+02:00

Gothic, don't forget Gothic. All the Gothic we have is essentially relexified Greek.

It is undeniable that Biblical translations have h...

2010-04-19T00:54:36.372+02:00

It is undeniable that Biblical translations have had profound impact on the languages which they are being translated into. The English King James Bible and the German Luther Bible are two examples of this.

Interestingly somebody once pointed out to me that in Fijian, the standard reference grammars cite a VSO general word order, but apparently native speakers regard this as nonsense, and the only reason it is considered so is because the first Bible translation into Fijian, the first major document published in the language, slavishly imitated the Hebrew and Greek word order and the writers of grammars took this as a reflection of the language's actual syntax (I have no citations for this than the word, but I don't doubt it's true).