Greek to Literary Chinese: a describing phrase can identify a group rather than assert another event
Decide whether the source names participants or reports what they do
A Greek passage can identify people through a description and then make a separate statement about them. When translating into Literary Chinese, keep the identifying phrase distinct from the main assertion. Otherwise a compact target can turn a description of the participants into an additional event or attach it to the wrong people.
The Greek UD documentation recognizes clauses modifying nouns, including relative clauses. It also distinguishes adjectives and participial forms. These source constructions provide evidence about what a description belongs to; they are not interchangeable instructions to add a particular target character.
For an original Greek account of a gathering, distinguish the people who arrived early from the assertion that those people prepared the room. Arriving identifies the group, while preparing is what the sentence reports about it. A translation that assigns the preparation to everybody present has expanded the group beyond the source description.
Read the whole phrase before assigning a meaning to 者
Robert Eno’s Wenyan primer explains 者 as nominalizing the preceding word or phrase. His discussion allows interpretations involving a person, thing or situation, according to context. A reader should therefore not insert an extra person meaning every time the character appears.
The primer also discusses long descriptions ending in 者. Such a phrase can contain its own subject, verb and object while functioning as one noun phrase in the larger sentence. A target line may consequently contain several event-related words without asserting every embedded event as a separate main statement.
For a Greek description identifying somebody through a wish to perform an action, preserve both the wishing and the intended action. Naming a person who wants to help is different from asserting that the person actually helped. The identifying phrase should not upgrade an intention into an accomplished contribution.
This is especially useful in translating a passage that subsequently evaluates the identified people. Establish exactly who receives the praise or criticism. If the source describes volunteers who wanted to participate, the target should not automatically include people who participated unwillingly or people merely mentioned nearby.
A subgroup description should keep the original boundary
Eno separately illustrates the partitive construction X 之 Y 者 with 牛之大者, selecting the large oxen from a larger set. His explanation distinguishes this from an ordinary X 之 Y relationship. The extra construction changes which expression supplies the underlying group being selected.
For an original Greek inventory passage, a description of the larger animals within a herd does not necessarily describe every animal in the herd. If a later instruction concerns only that selected group, preserve the restriction. A translation that retains large and herd but extends the instruction to all the animals changes its scope.
Conversely, do not introduce a subgroup if the Greek statement concerns the whole set. An ordinary description of an entire group and a selection of members with one property are not equivalent merely because both include the same descriptive word. Read the source’s quantifiers and references together with the modifier.
The practical check is to separate three things: the larger group, the description that selects its members and the main claim about those members. Follow the reference into the next sentence as well. This keeps a compact Literary Chinese expression from quietly widening the group, inventing a participant or turning a description into another independent assertion.
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