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Subject:Wood eye? Wood eye? Tin ear! Tin ear! From:"Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 19 Dec 2000 13:34:52 -0500
Bill Burns wrote:
>
>Um, don't you mean an "eye for the language"?
>
Bill,
That raises an interesting distinction.
A couple of years ago, I heard an interview on NPR with the author of a new translation of Genesis. He agreed with the interviewer that his translation was somewhat ugly as a written text. It included much repetition that any judicious editor would have deleted.
He pointed out, however, that the original text was a transcription of what had initially been part of an oral tradition and that, furthermore, the original text was meant to be read aloud by a priest, perhaps to people who were not themselves literate. So he had consciously followed the rhythms and rhetorical patterns of the original. As he read some passages aloud, his point became clear. They were quite beautiful.
What I took away from this interview was that some people read with their eyes alone, and others listen to their subvocalization of the words on the page. I know, for example, that I do the latter, making me a much slower reader than someone in the former group. I ran up against this when a coworker and I, in reviewing each other's work, made complementary corrections: she took repeated transitional words out of my prose, and I added them into her prose. Once we realized the reason, we just laughed about it, of course. But it remains something that I try to keep in mind as I read.
Dick
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