26-03-2019, 06:01 AM
Re the word "iris" appearing uniquely near a plant with a blue flower: do you realize how many blue flowers there are in the MS? It's a colour choice many times more problematic than the green water.
On the nature of the opening sentence, this is the kind of content so many aspiring translators get. An apparently philosophical or mystical collection of nouns and verbs devoid of most grammar.
Our problem is that our native languages are very analytical. One word, one bit if meaning. Much of our grammar is expressed in little function words. But Greek was much more synthetic. They actually needed those endings. For us, it feels like no big deal to drop them, but for them it woukd have been.
On the nature of the opening sentence, this is the kind of content so many aspiring translators get. An apparently philosophical or mystical collection of nouns and verbs devoid of most grammar.
Our problem is that our native languages are very analytical. One word, one bit if meaning. Much of our grammar is expressed in little function words. But Greek was much more synthetic. They actually needed those endings. For us, it feels like no big deal to drop them, but for them it woukd have been.