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16. The great remedy for ignorance of proper signs is knowledge of
languages. And men who speak the Latin tongue, of whom are those I
have undertaken to instruct, need two other languages for the knowledge
of Scripture, Hebrew and Greek, that they may have recourse to the
original texts if the endless diversity of the Latin translators throw
them into doubt. Although, indeed, we often find Hebrew words
untranslated in the books as for example, Amen, Halleluia, Racha,
Hosanna, and others of the same kind. Some of these, although they
could have been translated, have been preserved in their original form
on account of the more sacred authority that attaches to it, as for
example, Amen and Halleluia. Some of them, again, are said to be
untranslatable into another tongue, of which the other two I have
mentioned are examples. For in some languages there are words that
cannot be translated into the idiom of another language. And this
happens chiefly in the case of interjections, which are words that
express rather an emotion of the mind than any part of a thought we have
in our mind. And the two given above are said to be of this kind,
Racha expressing the cry of an angry man, Hosanna that of a joyful
man. But the knowledge of these languages is necessary, not for the
sake of a few words like these which it is very easy to mark and to ask
about, but, as has been said, on account of the diversities among
translators. For the translations of the Scriptures from Hebrew into
Greek can be counted, but the Latin translators are out of all
number. For in the early days of the faith every man who happened to
get his hands upon a Greek manuscript, and who thought he had any
knowledge, were it ever so little, of the two languages, ventured
upon the work of translation.
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