Translation Notebooks

Christian Alexander
Christian Alexander Member Posts: 746
edited November 21 in English Forum
What is a good way to do an electronic translation notebook for my Greek exegesis class starting next week? I have to translate the book of Romans. All my course books are loaded in Logos.
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  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,139

    Weekly bump for attention 4

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,139

    The question is unanswerable in that I don't know your skill level, translation philosophy, or class requirements. I tend to use a very visual method containing three parts:

    1. Possible ambiguities - in Sanskrit this includes alternative divisions of the word, in most languages it includes homoglyphs, polysemic words, ambiguous morphologies, or textual variations where the correct sense in not obvious. My notes may be Venn diagramms, word nets, or anything else that crossed by mind.
    2. Syntactic difficulties are captured as two tree diagrams with the original text being left to right and the translation being right to left. This leaves the detail lines face each other to be connected by lines indicating the "equivalent" entries. Notes indicate subtlities that are not captured in the translations.
    3. Word choices are captured in Venn diagrams - attempting to show both what may accidentally been added or what has been omitted from the denotation/conotation of the word.

    When everything is reasonably obvious and clear cut, I have few notes. When I'm puzzling through a difficult passage my notes may be copious.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • The question is unanswerable in that I don't know your skill level, translation philosophy, or class requirements. I tend to use a very visual method containing three parts:

    1. Possible ambiguities - in Sanskrit this includes alternative divisions of the word, in most languages it includes homoglyphs, polysemic words, ambiguous morphologies, or textual variations where the correct sense in not obvious. My notes may be Venn diagramms, word nets, or anything else that crossed by mind.
    2. Syntactic difficulties are captured as two tree diagrams with the original text being left to right and the translation being right to left. This leaves the detail lines face each other to be connected by lines indicating the "equivalent" entries. Notes indicate subtlities that are not captured in the translations.
    3. Word choices are captured in Venn diagrams - attempting to show both what may accidentally been added or what has been omitted from the denotation/conotation of the word.

    When everything is reasonably obvious and clear cut, I have few notes. When I'm puzzling through a difficult passage my notes may be copious.

    1. I have studied Greek for 5 years. My translation philosophy is more wooden and similar to the CSB and NASB. My class requirements are to translate the full text of the Epistle to the Romans. It has to be 60-100 pages and "read like a commentary." My process of translation seeks to preserve all of the components of God's communication inscripturated in the Bible. What do you think?

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,139

    I think that my beliefs regarding what a translation can and should do are sufficiently different from your goals as to make my advice inapplicable.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."