[b-greek] Hendiadys

From: Wayne Leman (Wayne_Leman@SIL.ORG)
Date: Sat Jul 28 2001 - 12:43:52 EDT


----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Allan Stauch" <RStauch@worldnet.att.net>

>
> Where I am going with this is that, while I am certain that a large
> responsibility is on the translator to accurately translate the meaning of
> the text in words and idiom, isn't it also a very large responsibility of
> the readers' to actively participate in understanding that meaning?

Richard, I do not think it is the reader's responsibility to try to figure
out what wasn't adequately translated for him. If the original KAI phrase
was a genuine hendiadys, I suggest that few fluent English speakers will
know that or have the skill to figure it out. I suggest that English has
extremely few examples of real hendiadys, mostly using some rather frozen
expressions such as "good and ..." or "nice and ...", e.g.

"I was good and mad."
"It's nice and warm in here."

> We, for
> instance, use "and" in the same way (ergo, "He is mean and cruel"),

In my dialect I don't get a hendiadys interpretation here. Hendiadys needs
to be an expression that a majority of speakers recognize as having a
meaning where one of the terms of the conjoined phrase is subordinate to the
other.

> so it
> should not be impossible for a modern American English reader to
understand
> all those other versions that translate KAI with "and" at this point [so,
> KJV, ASV, RSV, NRS.]

I suggest that most modern American readers can understand the hendiadys
meaning *only* if it has been pointed out to them by a Bible teacher,
minister, et al. I would, therefore, not call such a formal "translation" a
true translation. A true translation would take the hendiadys meaning of the
original and put it into English which can be readily grasped as having the
hendiadys meaning.

> In my example, "meanness" and "cruelty" could be seen
> as facets of one aspect of a person's nature.

I think this is an example of synonymous parallelism, rather than hendiadys.
The two rhetorical forms are often confused on Internet webpages and even in
some literature which explains Greek rhetorical forms. Hendiadys requires
that one of the terms of the conjoined form be subordinate to the other, as
when the scribes were amazed at the "intelligence and answers" of the 12
year old Jesus in the Temple. Here the first term modifies the second,
giving an accurate, proper translation to English as "his intelligent
answers." I suggest that no fluent speakers of English would be able to get
that meaning from the form-oriented English versions unless they had been
trained to recognize hendiadys in the Bible.

See my Translation Glossary entry for Hendiadys:

http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/glossh.htm#hendiadys

Best,
Wayne
---
Wayne Leman
Bible translation site: http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/



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