Viewing posts from April, 2015
For a believer in Christ, memorizing Scripture is a powerful and helpful aid to our faith. Poetic devices such as rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and structure are aids to memorization. Is it possible to produce Scripture translations that use these devices, while remaining accurate translations? These would have other benefits as well (children's illustrated Bibles, audio tapes that flow well, etc), but since memorization is clearly most helpful when as close to the original as possible, there would be challenges. Yet these challenges are similar to any translation effort; the switch of mode of expression is similar to a language switch.
A friend recently sent me the fun Singapore maths olympiad problem in which Albert and Bernard attempt to discover Cheryl's birthday. As well as being full of mathematical knowledge, this implies some philosophical assumptions about knowledge and truthfulness. Here's a slightly expanded version I made up, incorporating the question of honesty: