Ten recurring topics

Before I launch into today's main subject, this is a good time for some stock-taking followed by a look ahead to the immediate future of the blog. Things are actually moving quite fast and will continue to, and although I am aware that my readership does not number in the thousands or even hundreds, every reader is individually important to me and I want to make sure that from where you stand I am seen to be staying coherent, on-topic and going somewhere. so let's take stock.

In the eight blog posts to date, I have touched on a variety of aspects of my subject. My subject being, really, two things that are almost inextricably intertwined, and yet not the same: (1) Genesis as a literary work, a work of literature, a book in the fundamental (non-biblical) sense of the word; (2) translating Genesis, i.e. practically anything about translation that is pertinent to translating Genesis, and practically anything about Genesis that is pertinent to translating it. In theory or "officially" my approach route to all this is 2 because I have a job to do: to translate Genesis. The excuse, then, for getting involved with 1 is that a translator is supposed to have an understanding of what she or he is translating, both on the micro-level of understanding the words and sentences of the text and on the macro-level of knowing the genre and recognising the purpose and characteristics of the document.