Signpost

Karl Dedecius in “Problems of Literary Translation” cites a text that is difficult to translate faithfully while preserving the value of beauty. It was an inscription above a hotel in Switzerland: “Gaesten die nach der Ankunft keine Auskunft ueber ihre Herkunft geben, wird in der Zukunft keine Unterkunft gegeben”. The main signpost for the translator is FIDELITY. Lawyers do not have such a SIGNPOST that coordinates the effects of the various methods of interpretation. Not very faithful translation is verse 12 of Chap. 1 Genesis according to the Bible of the Millennium, “The Earth has delivered green plants: grass giving seed according to its species, and trees giving birth to fruit, IN WHICH THERE WAS SEED according to their species.” According to the Bible of James The Wujk, this text reads: “And the earth was born green and giving seed according to its own kind and tree making fruit, and having each of them seed according to its own kind.”

In the original, this text emphasizes two things: (a) that the tree makes fruit, and that these fruits have the seed of a tree that gives birth to these fruits (b) that things occur according to TYPES. This one sentence is ingeri dissuasive because the Israelites did not have the same philosophical sense as the Greeks. In this one sentence alone, the Jews captured at once what would become a recognized problem of philosophy only by the geniuses of logic in the 20th century.