Abstract
All modern translators of the Bible experience the appositeness of the Italian adage Traduttore traditore (a translator is a traitor) sooner or later. The same has been true for the first translators of the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, in translating the Hebrew Bible, one specific supplementary problem comes to the fore. The Hebrew language is completely different from the so-called Indo-European family of languages, to which Greek and Latin, but also most European languages belong. Krašovec focuses on a particular problem which translators—be it the translators of the Septuagint, the earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, or modern translators—are confronted with, namely the rendering of proper names. Alongside personal names, another category also includes toponyms. Confronted with a proper name, a translator in general has two options: transliteration or translation. In the first chapter, Krašovec deals above all with Hebrew proper names that have a function within the context of an aetiology—he uses the term ‘folk (popular) etymology’ (p. 4). This means passages which, mostly in a narrative fashion, retrospectively ‘explain’ a person’s name or a toponym. The author investigates the translation equivalents of the following proper names that are used as such within the Hebrew Bible: Eve, Babel, Attah El-roi, Beer-lahai-roi, Moab, Ben-ammi, Beer-sheba, Adonai-jireh, Esek, Sitmah, Rehoboth, Bethel, Jegar-Sahadutha, Galeed, Mizpah, Mahanaim, Peniel/Penuel, Succoth, El-bethel, Allon-bacuth, Abel-mizraim, Marah, Massah, Meribah, Taberah, Kibroth-hattaavah, Hormah, Bochim, Ramath-lehi, En-hakkore, Ebenezer, Sela-mahlekoth, Baal-perazim, Perez-uzzah, and Beracah. Not only translation equivalents in the ancient translations, but also the renderings in a variety of modern languages are taken into consideration.
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