We have arrived at the point in the biblioblogosphere where linking to a few representative posts on the issue of Bible translation is simply impossible. It’s a dead horse that, for some reason, we find the most sadistic pleasure in continuing to beat. The normal perpetrators are John Hobbins, David Ker, Iyov, Doug Mangum, and many others.

Something that has been discussed in the past, in a variety of posts, is proper English grammar versus freer grammar in translations. This is normally an issue of either A) wanting simple English (which, I guess, means bad English) or B) maintaining Hebrew word order. The latter is what I’d like to address in this post.

As many of you may know, I’m translating a bunch of Biblical wisdom texts for a class this semester. One of those texts happens to include Qohelet 3.10. Which says, according to MT:

רָאִיתִי אֶת־הָֽעִנְיָן אֲשֶׁר נָתַן אֱלֹהִים לִבְנֵי הָאָדָם לַעֲנֹות בֹּֽו׃

A literal translation might be, “I saw the task which God gave to the children of man to be tasked with it.” Of course, we see easily that literally translating this into English provides a somewhat odd construction. We simply don’t need the final pronoun in English. The majority of English translations simply render the final bit of the verse something like, “to be tasked with,” thus dropping the pronoun. This works perfectly fine. However, in English, prepositions are not words that we end sentences with(!). The most natural way to re-order the words in the verse to make it fit with proper English grammar would be, “I saw the task which God gave to the children of men with which to be tasked.” Only the NASB uses this word order though. I imagine it was deemed too difficult for 4th graders, and thus the easier, but less proper, reading was adopted.

I’m not here to argue that one ought to adopt the more grammatically correct reading. I just find it ironic that many translations, which claim to put things into proper English, in fact do not–at least in this case. I also find it somewhat amusing that the NASB, which supposedly keeps the Hebrew word order, abandons it in favor of proper English word order, at least in this case.

So, what does all of that mean? Nothing of any consequence, except to point out yet again that translating the Bible is a difficult and imprecise task. On the other hand, simply reading the Hebrew is a fun, energizing, and too often overlooked leisure time activity. Discussions regarding how a passage should be translated, and whether proper English or Hebrew word order should be favored would be rendered completely moot if everyone would simply learn Hebrew and Greek (and I suppose, to be fair, Aramaic needs to be added to that list, as Peter Bekins has pointed out).