International Symposium - Abstracts
The translation of the Bible was the beginning of a new era in the history of all nations. However, what does this trivial statement indeed mean? What influence had the translation of the Bible on the national languages and culture – on their aesthetic, expressive means: 1. on the target language – on its grammatical structure, conceptual system, and vocabulary, literary style, genres, and forms? 2. How the artistic images of the biblical narrative have developed in the figurative art of different nations? How was the artistic language appropriate to the biblical narrative perceived and developed in the context of different heritage environments; consequently, how these references were developed during the centuries?
- The Bible in Words
Various nations met the entrance of the Bible with various backgrounds – some with a high level of written culture, and in some cases, the translation of the Bible started by creating the alphabet. Different backgrounds gave the nations different challenges: some of them had to give up their highly developed rhetorical styles, had to change their image and character, and others had to create their written language. The section of the Symposium, which deals with the Bible language, aims to examine various Bible translations (Greek Septuagint and the translations of The Three, Old Latin and Jerome’s Vulgate, Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Armenian, Slavonic, Gothic, German...) exactly on the basis of these challenges, and to outline the triangle: Language (how can the language of the translation reflect morphological and syntactic structures, concepts, the vocabulary of the original) - Translator (his principles and potentials) - Reader/Listener (how understandable and acceptable the language full of unfamiliar concepts, grammatical constructions, and aesthetics should have been for the reader).
- The Bible in Images
The translation of the Bible was corresponding to the process of establishing new, exclusively different from the previous, figurative language of expression, its gradual formation, and subsequent completion. This process was not easy, instant, and identical for different epochs and circles. In the section of the symposium, where the approaches of the depiction of the Bible images will be discussed, the focus will be on the characteristic features of the different ethno-cultural circles. This applies to both countenance and iconographic peculiarities, as well as the means of expression. The existence of the triangle is clear in this case too: the language of figurative art (where together with the general features related to the confession, are reflected the local and individual traditions that have been formed in a long period of time in a certain ethno-cultural circle) - Author (together with the characteristics of environment and epoch marked with individuality) - Viewer/Perceiver (representatives of various ethno-confessional and sociocultural circles).