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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

Isn't any translation a product of the language norms of the translator, as opposed to a pure translation?

I know when I read Spanish, I have to mentally convert the order of words to what makes sense in English (for example, "Thanksgiving" in Spanish would be "Day of Action of Thanks" if translated directly).

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Yes, with the caveat that with religious texts there are certain conventions that get conserved even across languages. For example, The Book of John starts off "In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." However, the term being translated here as "Word" (λόγος- logos) could easily be translated a number of different ways, and the technically literal meaning of "word" was already falling out of favor by the time John was written. The word could be "Logic" or "reason" or "The underlying principle that governs the order of the universe" but early Latin translators chose to translate this term as "Verbe" and so future translations followed suit.

This is just one example. There are other instances where a word is a loanword from Greek or Latin because it is an early technical term. For example "sanctification" is taken directly from a Latin technical term that is translated that way because of how early Latin translators chose to translate the Greek.

Great example. See also “thou shalt not kill” which would contradict tons of the surrounding text, if that is actually what the original Hebrew said.

There's 3 part Radio 4 series from a while ago on the King James Version, with one of the 45 minute episodes focussed on the translation of the work: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x3x68

I wonder if this is what radicals like Gerrard Winstanley had in mind when developing the English Reformation as chance for social reform as well? This quote for example suggests he was I think:

>In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another.

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