I translated this as "But they also love God". Because "De" is a post positive and needs to be translated first and because "Kai" can mean "and, even, also" So I thought the best sense was to translate "Kai" as "also".
My question is why don't we translate "Kai" in this sentence?
Submitted by collinbullard on Wed, 2013-07-17 01:27
The translation of και... δε is often dependent on context. In short, there is no reason why και could not be translated as "also" or "even" in this sentence if there was a larger context that suggested this sense. There is, of course, no larger context for the exercises here, but you can see that in John 15:27, the context seems to indicate that the και υμεις δε means "And you also..." whereas in other places, such as Luke 1:76 (και συ δε), the phrase is simply translated "And you...". This does not mean the use of και συ δε is meaningless, it simply isn't translated; in this case, the δε probably marks a shift in the topic whereas the και links what follows to that which has gone before. The shift that happens in Luke 1:76 is that whereas Zechariah has been talking about God's past action, he now shifts (signified by δε) to speak of the future of the child (John). At the same time, the future of John is linked to the past action of God (signified by και). I'm overstating this a bit in order to make the point that και and δε are often function as discourse markers that can't be translated. Another interesting case is Luke 2:35, where Simeon shifts to speak to Mary in the middle of his prophecy about Jesus: the δε is omitted in some manuscripts... try to think of what difference it would make if the δε was included or not.
Comments
Why don't we translate both Kai and De?
Και ἀγαπῶσι (they love) δὲ τὸν θεον
I translated this as "But they also love God". Because "De" is a post positive and needs to be translated first and because "Kai" can mean "and, even, also" So I thought the best sense was to translate "Kai" as "also".
My question is why don't we translate "Kai" in this sentence?
The translation of και... δε
The translation of και... δε is often dependent on context. In short, there is no reason why και could not be translated as "also" or "even" in this sentence if there was a larger context that suggested this sense. There is, of course, no larger context for the exercises here, but you can see that in John 15:27, the context seems to indicate that the και υμεις δε means "And you also..." whereas in other places, such as Luke 1:76 (και συ δε), the phrase is simply translated "And you...". This does not mean the use of και συ δε is meaningless, it simply isn't translated; in this case, the δε probably marks a shift in the topic whereas the και links what follows to that which has gone before. The shift that happens in Luke 1:76 is that whereas Zechariah has been talking about God's past action, he now shifts (signified by δε) to speak of the future of the child (John). At the same time, the future of John is linked to the past action of God (signified by και). I'm overstating this a bit in order to make the point that και and δε are often function as discourse markers that can't be translated. Another interesting case is Luke 2:35, where Simeon shifts to speak to Mary in the middle of his prophecy about Jesus: the δε is omitted in some manuscripts... try to think of what difference it would make if the δε was included or not.