What Is Meaning?

While reading an article some time ago, a question was asked, "Where does meaning lie-in the words of the text or in the audience reaction to the text"(Problems of Translations, by Harvey Minkoff)? I have given much thought to this question and how it relates to the study of ancient texts generally and the Bible in particular. While on the outset, the question above seems simple enough, there are many facets to it one must consider.

On one hand, there is the literary text. This text is composed at a most basic level of letters (symbols) that make up words, combined by some structured syntax into sentences and paragraphs (thoughts), that in turn combine to preserve the idea (message) the writer is trying to convey to the reader. Just bringing across a message from one language to another is difficult enough as these thoughts and symbols rarely translate in a straight forward fashion given the differing symbol patterns and thought structure. These messages come to us often from very ancient times, from languages now dead or nearly dead, and to complicate matters even further, the people who wrote them certainly had very different ways to view their morality, their communities and their place in it. We today refer to this lens of interpretation as a world view and whether you think you have one or not, you do.

A translator of a text must take all this into consideration and decide what to do, translate as close as possible word-for-word (formal translation) or do something more oriented towards ensuring the reader leaves with the same idea the original reader would have had (dynamic translation). He or she must decide, where does the meaning of the text lie.

I am new at blogging and I am not sure I will be very good at it, but I do enjoy writing and exploring issues like those above. Over the coming weeks, I hope to begin exploring some ancient texts and relaying those thought to you, and I hope after reading them you have found this area to be as interesting as I find it!