The Difficulty of Conveying Hebrew Wordplays in Translation

When you study the Bible in Hebrew, you keep running into wordplays, alliteration, and folk etymologies that almost never survive a straight English translation. In this teaching you will see the real choice translators face: keep the feel of the original, or keep the exact meaning and explain the play in a footnote. You will walk through Babel and balal, Isaiah’s alliteration, Jeremiah’s almond tree, and a modern version that tries to keep New Testament poetry rhyming. Compare a few translations and you will catch what one rendering has to leave on the table.

~~~

FRONTL|NE Newsletter: https://thelineoffire.org/newsletter

Donate: https://thelineoffire.org/donate-one-time

X: https://twitter.com/DrMichaelLBrown

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LFTV

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmichaelbrown

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ASKDrBrown

Website: https://thelineoffire.org

Radio Broadcast from The Line of Fire

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.