Translating Religion

Jews employed not only their sacred texts in Hebrew and Aramaic but also in translation into their local variety. Therefore, the genre of translating sacred texts into Jewish languages, religiolects, and varieties has been widespread throughout the Jewish world. This volume is a study of the translation of sacred texts, known as the shar, into Judeo-Arabic in Egypt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The study places Judeo-Arabic on the Jewish linguistic spectrum, traces its history, and offers insights to the spoken variety of Egyptian Judeo-Arabic, which set it apart from other Arabic dialects. The book also provides a linguistic model of the translation of the sacred texts. Rather than viewing the translation as only verbatim, the study traces in great detail the literal/interpretive linguistic tension with which the translators struggled in their work.

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