Talk:מדבר

"wilderness" translation

@Metaknowledge I'm not convinced that "wilderness" can't be a good translation. This blog post, for instance, notes some instances where desert is clearly not the best translation. I'm no Hebrew scholar, so I'm willing to defer to your judgement, but I feel like such a common translation shouldn't go unnoted in our entry. There may not be a perfect word, but a gloss can easily clarify what the exact sense is. I should also note that in the Biblical Hebrew course I am taking, the only translation my textbook and instructor have given is "wilderness". Surely this isn't just a bad translation? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 15:51, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Sheedy: If I were your teacher, I'd stick with all the traditional English words like "wilderness" and "firmament", but for religious rather than linguistic reasons. This is case is even knottier, however: look at Job 24:5, where the KJV uses "desert" for מדבר and "wilderness" for ערבה — even though we have reason to think of the latter as a more arid subset of the former! Not only were the translations a mess back then, but the word "wilderness" itself has undergone semantic shift; many Americans will think of something like the Battle of the Wilderness, and you need only look at the picture in that article to realise that a very different ecosystem is being denoted. I don't think the solution here is to add poor translations, but instead to add a more detailed gloss or usage note summarising what Balashon said. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:40, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge:: OK. I think the connotations "wilderness" has in my idiolect may not match up with any semantic shifts the word may have undergone in the US. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if my perception of the word is substantially affected by its use in English translations of the Bible. I think that a usage note would be helpful, as well as an additional definition that accounts for usages the blog mentions (some Hebrew-English dictionaries have "pasture"). I'm not confident enough in my Hebrew to add either, however. If you think you know enough to make the changes, I think that would be helpful. Otherwise, I'll just try to come back to it when I'm more proficient in Hebrew. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:28, 2 February 2021 (UTC)