(1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (2) Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (3) And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (4) God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (5) God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day
起初 神創造天地。
地是空虛混沌，淵面黑暗； 神的靈運行在水面上。
神說：“要有光。”就有了光。
神看光是好的，就把光暗分開了。
神稱光為晝，稱暗為夜。有晚上，有早晨，這是頭一日。
The word god is used a little more losely in the chinese language as we dont have a definition between the pronoun "God" and "god". However, it means a heavenly figure. However, Buddha has his own name as well as many of the other godly figures. It is a very literal translation and there was no large amount of difficulty. The main difference is the ordering in which the words are placed. Like many other languages, grammar changes in Chinese versus English. Hence, it was slightly necessary to rearrange the grammar.
It was relatively straightforward because in Chinese, there is no past vs. relative past and chinese does not have gender differences among words. The translation can be very literal and does not need the complications like many other languages. The difficulty with Chinese is writing and speaking, however in terms of translating, it is not quite as difficult. Of course, the flow of the verse will change but that applies will all translations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Reading this translation was very interesting, especially the part about how the concept of God does not have a specific word in the language differing from "god" or "gods". Despite this fact, Buddha and other heavenly figures do. I think this is a striking example of how a language comes to reflect a society (perhaps archaically)- and the Chinese language has come to reflect how Buddhism is a more dominant, widespread in China than Christianity and other forms of monotheism. Maybe this also has implications of how this language reality in turn reinforces the dominance of Buddhism versus Christianity (for example, it's clearly easier to follow a religion if the main figures of that religion actually have words in a language you speak).
ReplyDelete