Authorized Version. Fulke, however, irritated by what he considers a
superstitious regard for the number of words in the original on the part
of the Rhemish translators, puts the whole question on a common-sense
basis. He charges his opponents with making "many imperfect sentences
... because you will not seem to add that which in translation is no
addition, but a true translation."[189] "For to translate out of one
tongue into another," he says in another place, "is a matter of greater
difficulty than is commonly taken, I mean exactly to yield as much and
no more than the original containeth, when the words and phrases are so
different, that few are found which in all points signify the same
thing, neither more nor less, in divers tongues."[190] And again, "Must
not such particles in translation be always expressed to make the sense
plain, which in English without the particle hath no sense or
understanding. To translate precisely out of the Hebrew is not to
observe the number of words, but the perfect sense and meaning, as the
phrase of our tongue will serve to be understood."[191]
For the distinguishing characteristics of the Authorized Version, the
beauty of its rhythm, the vigor of its native Saxon vocabulary, there is
little to prepare one in the comment of its translators or their
predecessors. Apparently the faithful effort to render the original
truly resulted in a perfection of style of which the translator himself
was largely unconscious. The declaration in the preface to the version
of 1611 that "niceness in words was always counted the next step to
trifling,"[192] and the general condemnation of Castalio's "lewd
translation,"[193] point to a respect for the original which made the
translator merely a mouthpiece and the English language merely a medium
for a divine utterance. Possibly there is to be found in appreciation of
the style of the original Hebrew, Greek, or Latin some hint of what gave
the English version its peculiar beauty, though even here it is hard to
distinguish the tribute paid to style from that paid to content. The
characterization may be only a bit of vague comparison like that in the
preface to the Authorized Version, "Hebrew the ancientest, ... Greek the
most copious, ... Latin the finest,"[194] or the reference in the
preface to the Rhemish New Testament to the Vulgate as the translation
"of greatest majesty."[195] The prefaces to the Geneva New Testament and
the Geneva Bible combine fairly definite linguistic comment with less
obvious references to style: "And because the Hebrew and Greek phrases,
which are hard to render in other tongues, and also short, should not be
so hard, I have sometimes interpreted them without any whit diminishing
the _grace_ of the sense, as our language doth use them";[196] "Now as
we have chiefly observed the sense, and labored always to restore it to
all integrity, so have we most reverently kept the propriety of the
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