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you are here: > Self > 8.
Understanding of our ancestors
| 8.2 |
The meaning of words and their translation
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| Throughout the journey of UCA and SELF we have seen the power of words and their origin playing a crucial part in understanding the deeper meaning of how and why things happen the way they do. The word "humour" as we discussed, had a vastly different meaning four hundred years ago than it does today. | ||
| We also saw that a range of words and concepts in fact have a multitude of meanings. That one word can mean a range of things, depending on the context, such as the word "universe", or "gods". | ||
| 8.2.1 | The power of the translator | |
| The correct translation of meaning becomes even more difficult when considering the translation of ancient texts written in languages thousands of years old that also refer to words with double meanings and symbolic representation. In these cases, the knowledge and impressions of the translator can and do have a profound impact on how texts are translated into English. | ||
| As a result, a text containing rich and colorful symbolic meanings can be rendered simplistic and nonsensical due to the interpreters skills and desires. The same text, when deciphered with a greater understanding of the symbolic meanings can have a completely different interpretation. | ||
| Worse, the translator may actually choose to deliberately obscure the depth of meaning of a text they find particularly challenging, or disconcerting. This has often been leveled at those scholars performing the earliest translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Scrolls. | ||
| A classic example of this is the translation of a number of ancient words in Hebrew and in the Sumerian language. | ||
| For example,a popular translation of the Hebrew word Shem in ancient texts is the meaning "heaven or heaven chariot", even though the word shem-esh means "shem-fire". Looking at the word and its important relationship with the passage of key saints in hebrew literature, and the Tower of Babel incident, some sentences do not make sense until an alternative (more contemporary) definition is applied such as "sky vehicle". | ||
| Thus the Tower of Babel story becomes: Then they said "come let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a sky vehicle and not be scattered over the faces of the whole Earth." | ||
| In Sumerian, a more contemporary definition of the word AN. UNNA. KI is "Those who from heaven to Earth come." | ||
| 8.2.2 | Re-looking and re-defining texts | |
| So it is, we re-look at a range of the oldest and arguably the most sacred texts of humanity, to seek and understand the meanings behind the words. In particular, we seek to understand and see similarities between different cultures regarding the creation of humanity, the role of external forces in our history and the reasons behind this influence. | ||
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