Translation talk:Lamentations

Difficult
This is very poetic, and there are many difficulties. The Hebrew נִידָה has connotations of menstruation, which is important, because that's blood imagery, and then onto the fringes of the next verse, but it is not clear to me (my Hebrew vocabulary, while natively acquired, is pathetic) whether the word actually carries menstrual blood connotations in this context.

The answer to this question determines how to translate the three occurences of "Nidah".75.24.127.154 09:07, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

בַחוּרַ
This word is translated as "young man", but it is better translated as "virile man". Similarly, the word גֶּבֶר means "male", but it is used to mean man as well, but with the connotation that the maleness is significant, unlike other words for "man", which are more universal. English does not have a sufficiently differentiated vocabulary of maleness for this.75.24.127.154 11:23, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

צָר
I was annoyed by not finding a good translation for this simple concept. The 1917 Jewish translation uses "adversary", I used "opponent" somewhere else, "enemy" is "oyev", and this is different, it means "sorrow-bringer", or "one who aggreives me with troubles", or "one who makes my options few because he has constricted me with annoyance", or something along those lines. Unfortunately, all the words for "opponent" carry connotations of competition or battle, and this word is just a person who lands trouble on your head, independent of any struggle. So finally, I chose "beseiger" because "seige" comes from a similar root. But this is a multisyllabic overly specific word, and although it accurately describes what the "tsar" did, it does not get to the generality of the term.

Leafing through the new international version (which was pretty shitty in most places) to see what they did, I found out that they used the word "foe". I feel pretty stupid at not having found this, because I scratched my head over this for a long long time. Foe is a perfect translation, and keeps the syllable count optimal. This word is the only borrowing from this version in this text.69.86.66.128 01:57, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

נִידָה
The word "Nidah" refers to a menstrually unclean woman. In this context, upon close rereading, I think that it is important to keep the blood imagery, because the uncleanliness flows onto her fringes, and she becomes menstrual after her sins, all of which give an image of a blood-bath in the city, which seems to be the intended meaning.69.86.66.128 02:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

נּוּגוֹת
I gave this as "touched" and I think it is supposed to be "touched with plague". The root is "touch", but any implication of sexual violation is somewhat less explicit in the hebrew.69.86.66.128 02:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)