I address that exact issue here, using Russian and (Modern) Hebrew to show that conveying the structure can mis-convey the meaning.

-Joel

Donna & Joel, thanks for your comments. I think I agree with you both 100%!

Bob, morphosyntax simply means morphology+syntax (ie, the structures of words and sentences) because most linguists consider them to be very closely related, except for those who are strong lexicalists.

Now it’s impossible to fully translated anything. What I’ve been asking if there’s any point to even attempt to even partially translate morphosyntax. I accept that the Hebrew is verb-object object-verb object-verb. But why does the best way of translating that passage into English need to have the same structure?

It’s certainly true that word order and word structure contribute to meaning, but they do so differently in different languages.

So when you say:

When people talk about a literal … translation, they usually mean that it attempts to convey the morphology and syntax of the source into the target language.

I think what you mean is that such a (“literal”) translation tries to mimic the morphology and syntax

Doing so is, in essence, no different than mimicking the sounds of the source in the target.

We all know that the sounds dahg in Hebrew should not be translated as “dog” in English, even though they sound the same. (As it happens, dahg means “fish.”)

Similarly, a verb at the beginning or end or whatnot in Greek/Hebrew should not necessarily be translated as the same word order in English.

So I agree that “shape and syntax are both important,” but that doesn’t mean that the shape and syntax of the original should appear unchanged in translation.

-Joel

All that can be preserved is the shape of the thought not the form of the language itself. My example is one of hundreds of cases I have come across. The point is verb-object object-verb object-verb. But maybe that is not what you mean in your question.

Can you clarify Bob?

My own feelings are that normal morphosyntax should not be copied across into another language – which just makes the language sound unnatural when it wasn’t so in the source (that is, it’s a bad translation). But when the morphosyntax is unusual, the reason for it being unusual should be conveyed, in whatever way is natural for that language.

In my experience, unusual morphosytax always hints at an emotion, like poetic tension in Bob’s example, or anger, or astonishment (like the English example I read recently on facebook: “That. Is. So. Awesome”).

Hi Bob, the first situation you mentioned sounds like information structure, a type of pragmatics. I think that information structure should be conveyed to the target language as much as is possible, but this does not mean that the morphosyntax used to mark information structure should be.

As to Psalm 1:1, I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

Also important are shapes which unify a thought. Psalm 1:1 is a most obvious example. The Septuagint and the Vulgate both preserve the form, but many English translations do not – and they add nothing with their failure. It amazes me that The NETS fails to preserve the Greek word order that mimics the Hebrew.

אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ
אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ
בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים
וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים
לֹא עָמָד
וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים
לֹא יָשָׁב

beatus vir
qui non abiit
in consilio impiorum
et in via peccatorum
non stetit
et in cathedra pestilentiae
non sedit

μακάριος ἀνήρ
ὃς οὐκ ἐπορεύθη
ἐν βουλῇ ἀσεβῶν
καὶ ἐν ὁδῷ ἁμαρτωλῶν
οὐκ ἔστη
καὶ ἐπὶ καθέδραν λοιμῶν
οὐκ ἐκάθισεν

Contrast NETS
Happy the man
who did not walk
by the counsel of the impious
or stand
in the way of sinners
or sit down
in the sear of pestiferous people

(cute – but misses the mark nonetheless)

My rendering:
Happy is the one
who has not walked
in the advice of the wicked
and in the way of sinners
has not stood
and in the seat of the scornful
has not sat

That is the first thing I ever tried to translate – I think it took me two months as a starting exercise. I have not changed my opinion on the importance of structure and syntactic sequence.