Translation Talk with Everett Fox
A conversation with Everett Fox about Biblical Hebrew, Buber & Rosenzweig, and the art of translation.
The other day I began my series of Translation Talk interviews with a conversation with Professor Everett Fox about his unique approach to translating Biblical Hebrew:
Before the interview begins there’s a short clip from Alexander Korda's film Rembrandt in which the painter, played by Charles Laughton, returns home to his family's mill and reads Psalm 77 aloud at the dinner table. Prof. Fox suggests this scene is as an example of proper attention to the rhythm of the Bible.1
If there are translators with whom you’d like me to speak, please send suggests to bibletranslation@substack.com. And if you haven’t already, please:
Compare Laughton’s recitation of the Psalm to a field recording of a Greek peasant declaiming an epic poem or Ezra Pound reading Canto XLV. (Pound is one of the only modern Anglophone poets with whom the old rhythms were still alive.)