NWT Oddities

by snowbird 24 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  Excellent observations, Mebaqqer. I never noticed that inconsistency before, although I honestly have not read the NWT much since I left. I am sure there are many other interesting examples out there. BTW, welcome to the forum!

  Thanks to the new search utility, I was able to find this interesting old post in the archives:

  I recently had a discussion with an ex-DO, and Gilead grad who met with F. Franz in 1958 to discuss his concerns with the translation of the preposition "in" ("en", Gr.), which F.F. translated seven different ways in the first two chapters of Colossians. After three hours of discussion he said F.F. was unable to answer any of his questions. He felt that F.F. had at best a "cursory and superficial" knowledge of Greek.
  At least he could have used better English!

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/2510/33203/post.ashx#33203

  oompa....The NIV is pretty good....it is more on the evangelical side. I tend to refer to the NIV and the JB (which is a Catholic translation). Both however are rather loose in their renderings and occasionally veer a little bit close to paraphrase, so I always try to check the original language just to be sure I have not been misled by the translation choice on a given point. I like both versions mainly because they read rather well in current English. The JB also has the best layout and presentation I have ever seen in a translation (and it uses Yahweh in the OT too).
• 

  Shawn10538

  Put side by side like that it makes the NWT sound like the language of the book of Mormon. It has a false, pretentiious air to it, like they are trying to sound Biblical on purpose because they are just making shit up.
• 

  snowbird

  Thanks, bbdodger, for that amusing lesson on Engrish. I once visited an Asian supermarket that had a sign on the door that read: YES WE ARE IN ACCEPTANCE OF FOODSTAMPS. As my estranged Jamaican husband would say, I had was to laugh.

  Thankfully, someone corrected the sign to read: WE ACCEPT USDA FOODSTAMPS.

  And, thank you mebaqqer for the lesson on the waw consecutive. JWD rocks!!!

  Sylvia
• 

  Narkissos

  Welcome mebaqqer!

  Actually this pattern (overtranslation of verbal forms) lies behind practically every "original" adverb or adverbial phrase in the NWT, especially in the OT.

  Another practice conducive to English oddities is the stiff use of definitions (which usually apply to only a segment of the semantic range of the original terms) as renderings, especially in the NT (e.g. "undeserved kindness" or "system of things").

  As to the NIV, I would personally nuance Leolaia's appraisal, because of its (apologetic) harmonising tendency. One instance I remember is the use of the pluperfect in Genesis 2 (e.g. v. 8, "now the LORD God had planted a garden...", v. 19 "now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field...") which can hardly be explained by anything else but the will to harmonise the second creation story with the first (Genesis 1). On this particular point I find it worse than the NWT.
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  Witness 007

  Franz trying to be fancy...should go back to college...I've read somewhere he had a Jewish friend who assisted him in translating.
• 

  Frequent_Fader_Miles

  Clearly the translation was not produced by literary geniuses.

  I couldn't agree with you more! Such poor translations could never be the product of a true literary mind. Seems like a novice let loose in the research library.
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  Leolaia

  To add to my last post, are there any other examples of verbal hendiadys (in which the second verb occurs as an adverbial intensive) in the NWT that are rendered inconsistently, where the hendiadys is simultaneously recognized in the English adverb and ignored in the rendering of both verbs? Is there a handy list of occurrences of this construction in the OT where one could check?
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  Deputy Dog

  I was just talking about this one the other day.

  Gen 1:14

  And God went on to say: "Let luminaries come to be in the expanse of the heavens to make a division between the day and the night; and they must serve as signs and for seasons and for days and years.

  Gen 1:15

  And they must serve as luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to shine upon the earth." And it came to be so.

  Gen 1:16

  And God proceeded to make the two great luminaries, the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars.

  I guess light would be hard to understand?
• 

  Narkissos

  DD

  I don't know how odd "luminaries" sound in English, but the French luminaires (which does sound a bit strange in this context) has been used by many modern French versions (e.g. Jérusalem, TOB) for a specific reason: namely, that ma`or is neither an "astronomical" term for "stars" nor a "generic" term for "lights". It does apply to artefacts such as the temple's "lampstand" (Exodus 25:6 etc.), and its use in the (priestly) first creation story seems to serve a particular purpose -- denying the divine status of the heavenly bodies and depicting them as mere "objects" within a (probably temple-like) cosmical building.
• 

  Deputy Dog

  Nark

  I speak French and I guess it sort of fits. But it's not the best English word to use.

  I wonder what the Brits think.