ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how sacred text translation could meet the expectations of both its etic and emic readers. That confirmation of meaning of the actual words of a sacred text may provide the common ground between readers of different attitudes is explored through the lens of the writer’s own work on the mystical Aramaic text Tiqqunei ha-Zohar (TZ), where an attempt is made to replicate the ‘voice’ of revelation in Hebraic literature through translating into English the ‘experience’ of reading TZ in its original language. Methods discussed which aim to transmit something of the source reader experience include: the use of Buberian Leitwort, which anchors symbolic referents within fixed equivalents, and reduces the lexical disparity between the source and target languages; Meschonnic rhythm which promotes the underlying cadence unique to each text; and Rosenzweig’s cola, which create visual poetic form in the rhythm of a minimum sense unit.
