23 The Pauline Key Words πνεῦμα and σάρξ and their Translation usual sense-oriented17 translation-strategy shared with his guru Cicero, when translating the Holy Scripture in which uerborum ordo mysterium est: Ego enim non solum fateor, sed libera voce profiteor, me in interpretatio- ne Graecorum absque Scripturis Sanctis, ubi et uerborum ordo mysterium est, non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu. (Epist. 57.5) For I myself not only admit but freely proclaim that in translating from the Greek (except in the case of the holy scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery) I render sense for sense and not word for word. (translation Fremantle18). A more radical expression of this idea is found in the prologue to the Wisdom of Sirach (quoted above), where the grandson of the author felt the need to express some reservations against the Greek translation of his grandfather’s manuscript: the sense of a text resides partially in the structure of the original language. We can conclude that in translat- ing sacred texts, as it involves more rigid rules than in other texts, both form and meaning are the subject of translation. This close connection of form and meaning, however, is practically impossible to preserve in interlingual transfer. In other words, translation inevitably implies a loss of information. The basic question is to which extent the formal aspect of a text can be preserved in translation, and, in case the connection between form and meaning in the source text cannot be reflected in a satisfying way in the target language, what is the importance of these formal aspects. A defini- tive answer cannot be given here. As the importance of formal aspects will always be under discussion (cfr. the literal-idiomatic debate19), we will give a brief survey of the more problematical features. In cases where formal equivalence does not obstruct equivalence of meaning there is, of course, no reason to change the form. The macro- structural level is generally felt easy to preserve20. On the micro-struc- tural level the problem is more complex21. In some cases the resemblances The term “sense” is used in contrast to “meaning” to refer not to the lexical meaning 17 of a word, but to the contextual meaning of a text element. In cognitive linguistics, where lexical meaning and contextual use of a linguistic sign cannot be seen independent of each other, this distinction is irrelevant. W.H. Fremantle, St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works (A Select Library of the Nicene 18 and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series 6, Edinburgh 1893, re- printed 1994). D.Tuggy, Literal-Idiomatic, 239-244. 19 E.g. order of the sentences, division in verses, paragraphs, chapters, books, ... 20 E.g. word order, syntactic structures, punctuation, … 21