Spindel Memorial Lecture presents Robert Alter: "Translating the Bible"

The Hebrew Bible incorporates a great deal of artfully fashioned narrative prose and finely articulated poetry.  These are essential to the vision of God, creation, and humanity conveyed in the texts, and so a translation should strive to suggest in English something of the stylistic power of the Hebrew--its rhythms, its deployment of expressive syntax, the fine precision of its word choices, the eloquence of its diction.  The challenge to the translator is that there are such large structural and semantic differences between biblical Hebrew and modern English, and strategies have to be worked out to bridge that distance.