Translating individual words.

 March 4, 2007 theology personal

\newcommand{\N}{\mathbb{N}} \newcommand{\Z}{\mathbb{Z}} \newcommand{\Q}{\mathbb{Q}} \newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\C}{\mathbb{C}}

\newenvironment{question}[1][]{\par\textbf{Question (#1).}}{} \newenvironment{theorem}[1][]{\par\textbf{Theorem (#1).}}{} \newenvironment{lemma}[1][]{\par\textbf{Lemma (#1).}}{} \newenvironment{proof}{\textit{Proof.}}{}

Given a text in two languages, is it possible to uncover the meaning of individual words?

The Bible is a particularly easy text to work with, since corresponding sentences are marked (i.e., with the same chapter and verse numbers). I downloaded a copy of the Hebrew Bible and the King James’ Version, and looked at Deuteronomy 6:4.

For each word in Hebrew, I found all the other verses with that word, and gathered together all the corresponding English verses; by picking the most popular word from those English verses (ignoring “the” and “and” and such), I found a pretty good translation of the original Hebrew word. In short, I picked the most popular English word in all those verses containing the non-English word.

So here’s Deuteronomy 6:4, with the top six English words underneath each Hebrew word:
אֶחָֽד יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל שְׁמַ֖ע
one
king
for
side
all
with 		Lord
God
thy
for
thou
thee 		our
God
Lord
for
which
not 		Lord
God
thy
for
thou
thee 		Israel
Lord
children
all
his
for 		not
Lord
will
heard
them
voice

Remember to read this from left-to-right. Pretty impressive–it didn’t quite get the verb שְׁמַ֖ע but it did well enough anyway.

It also works in Greek. Here’s Galatians 3:26 with the most popular English words underneath each Greek word.
πάντες γὰρ υἱοὶ θεοῦ ἐστε διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν χριστῶ ἰησοῦ.
all
that
they
him
for
are 		for
that
not
him
but
unto 		children
shall
are
them
your
they 		God
that
for
unto
not
but 		are
you
for
that
not
shall 		for
that
not
unto
God
which 		that
for
unto
his
which
was 		faith
that
for
God
but
Christ 		that
unto
for
him
not
which 		Christ
Jesus
are
that
which
God 		Jesus
unto
that
him
Christ
said

It didn’t quite figure out διὰ is by or through.

In the end, this isn’t shocking, but it’s surprising how easy it is: the Ruby program to do this is only 150 lines long (which includes the code to print out those nice HTML tables with Unicode).