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NASB | Matthew 1:19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Matthew 1:19 And Joseph her [promised] husband, being a just and righteous man and not wanting to expose her publicly to shame, planned to send her away and divorce her quietly. |
Subject: What does "send her away" refer to? |
Bible Note: "My saying that the by the fact you asked the question must mean you know the answer, wasn’t an attempt to be a wise guy." I didn't take it that way, Ed. "I meant you had to have suspected Matt 1:19 was a hard to understand phrase or you wouldn't have asked about it." Exactly. We are trained as Bible translators to ask questions where we suspect there may be a problem. But we still do not know what the answer will be. We do not know what understanding people will have of the part of the translation that is being tested. If we knew, we would not need to ask. "I further noticed in your survey each passage in question could be considered confusing because they all have double meanings." Yes, each passage was a candidate for a possible misunderstanding. So I have made a proper field test, testing passages where we wonder if there is a problem. The field test will either confirm that there is a problem or will tell us that there is no problem. " In fact you gave as a possible survey answer the alternate meaning in most cases." Yes, I believe it was the proper thing to give the literal meaning which would be the most likely meaning one would expect, as well as to give respondents an opportunity to give some other meaning if they believe it is more likely in the context of the Bible verse. " Therefore to me I would conclude you must be already aware of the problem, you must also understand what the problem is." Exactly, because of our training and experience, we often can suspect where the POSSIBLE problem points are. But we cannot know if they are actual problems until we do the necessary testing. The same is true for any product which is made and needs to be tested before release to the public. We may know that the typical place where a tire will fail is where the tread attaches to the steel belts. So we have to test that place on tires especially carefully. If a tire passes the test, we are glad. If it doesn't pass the test, we have to throw it away. If most of the tires do not pass the test, we know that we have a design problem and have to make changes in the design. It is exactly the same with Bible translation. " And may even have a solution in mind. If that happens to be true then why ask?" Because we do not know what understanding people have from the translated passage. We are testing a translation which was done by a good translation team. The team believed that they translated accurately or else they would not have translated as they did. It is now for the field testing stage of the process to determine if the translators' beliefs about the accuracy of their translation are correct or not. " If you suspect a passage is hard to understand or does not convey the clearest understanding why not just change it forget the survey and get on with it? " Because we do not know the answer until we field test and learn the answer. Many times people can get the correct answer from translation wordings which may not be as clear as some others. There can be important reasons for not translating something in the clearest way. Sometimes it is important to retain the flavor of the original culture. With the many unknown factors in the translation process, it is necessary that we field test, to learn what we do not know. "Forgive me I come from a corporate background " You can be forgiven for that!! :-) " and we only used surveys when we didn’t know if there were problems, or if we didn’t have an understanding of what the problem was." Bible translators use surveys for a wider range of issues than that. We do not use surveys when we already know the answers, though, I can assure you that. That would be a waste of our time. We only ask about things for which we do not know how target audiences will understand them. " Both of which you seem to have a grasp of. That is why I’m having a hard time understanding what you attempting to do. Not that you owe me a explanation I’m just being curious. " I'm happy to try to provide an explanation, Ed. Did it work this time? "The problem is not the multiple choice it is the answers you provide. In this case you I would think a better selection would be. A. He was going to send her to another location. B. He was going to send her on vacation C. He had decided to divorce her. D. none of the above. In this case we supply both the correct and the wrong answer and make them choose between them. Or you could do it like True or false this passage means Joseph was going to divorce Mary? Or True or false this passage means Joseph was going to break his betrothal to Mary? " Thanks for the good suggestions, Ed. Blessings, Wayne http://committed.to/fieldtesting |