Review of Targums Add-on, Targums Wordmap, Targums Tagged Texts, Targums English Texts, etc.

[Accordance Enthusiast]

General Review of Targums Add on bundle: Good resources.

 

These resource in the Targums Add-on bundle have great potential, but currently there are several flaws.

 

Edited March 28, 2022 by Anonymous

[Accordance Enthusiast]

***This has been corrected, thank you***

 

Targums Wordmap problems:

 

1. Whenever I amplify (triple click, live click, right-click then search etc.) from the Targums Wordmap Accordance just crashes and I have to start all over. This is very frustrating.

 

2. Occasionally the instant details shown in the alignment pane are correct, but normally it is totally wrong! It displays the details of a different word than the one I clicked on. This is very poor.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by Accordance Enthusiast

[Accordance Enthusiast]

Targums Tagged errors:

Good recourse, but occasionally the parsing of the Aramaic words is clearly wrong.

 

E.g. in Gen. 6:4 the unambiguous plural form “עלין” is erroneously parsed as a “peal participle masculine singular”. The same mistake also occurs in Num. 27:21, Num. 34:2, Due. 4:5.

 

Also in Gen. 23:10 the Aramaic verb “עלי” is correctly parsed as a “Peal participle masculine plural construct,” but in Gen. 23:18 the same verb in the same context is parsed as a “singular” participle.

 

This is what I found with one verbal root, “עלל”. How many similar mistakes will exist when parsing other verbal roots? Such mistakes in parsing makes grammatical searches inaccurate.

 

This is so poor I think the whole database will have re-checked for mistakes in parsing.

 

[Accordance Enthusiast]

 

Targums English Problems:

These English Translations are probably great if you do not know Aramaic.
But if you read the Aramaic alongside the English you will notice occasional errors and inconsistencies in the translations.

 

The notes are also not accurate. E.g., in Gen. 1:1 the Targum Neofiti English note reads “McNamara looked at the original ms. and saw that the dalet was written with a second hand over an erasure and is not original”. This is not true nor an accurate quote. McNamara did not claim that the Dalet was written over an erasure but only that there was an erasure in this phrase. I looked up the manuscript ( https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Neofiti.1 ) and one can clearly see an erasure in front of the word “שכלל”, but there is no erasure under the Dalet of the word “דייי”, and the Dalet is written in the original script, not by a second hand.

 

Most of the Targum English Notes are currently not linked to the Translation! Up until Judges 18:7 the notes display correctly, where after there is a flaw in every note so that they are no longer linked to the English translation.

 

[Accordance Enthusiast]

Here are some examples of inaccurate translation in the Targums English module:

In Gen. 10:10 the phrase “בארעא דבבל” is inaccurately translated as “the land of Shinar.” This should really be translated as “the land of Babylon.” In Gen. 11:2 the exact same Aramaic phrase is correctly rendered as “the land of Babylon.”

If you only read the English translation you will be deceived to think that the Aramaic is the same as the Hebrew is Gen. 10:10, but different in 11:2. But in reality the Aramaic in both these cases interpret the Hebrew text the same way. This inaccuracy means you cannot rely on this translation for study in the Targums.

Here is another example:
Gen. 11:3: The English translation says “let us HEAT them in the fire.” If you read only this English translation you will think that the Aramaic Targum differs from the Hebrew text by using “heat” instead of “burn.” But this is a mistranslation! The Aramaic reads: “וְנִשׂרוֹפִינוּן בְנוּרָא”, which literally means “let us BURN them in the fire” – exactly the same meaning as the Hebrew text. This means you cannot rely on this inaccurate translation if you want to know what the Aramaic targums really says.

My conclusion is that these translations really need to be checked by a second translator, and corrected, before they will be accurate enough for people to study the Targums in English.

[Mark Allison]

12 hours ago, Anonymous said:

Targums Wordmap problems:

 

1. Whenever I amplify (triple click, live click, right-click then search etc.) from the Targums Wordmap Accordance just crashes and I have to start all over. This is very frustrating.

 

2. Occasionally the instant details shown in the alignment pane are correct, but normally it is totally wrong! It displays the details of a different word than the one I clicked on. This is very poor.

 

 

 

 

 

Anonymous,

 

You probably have an older version of the Targums Wordmap. Check for Updates to download the latest version (2.4). 

[Mark Allison]

12 hours ago, Anonymous said:

Targums Tagged errors:

Good recourse, but occasionally the parsing of the Aramaic words is clearly wrong.

 

E.g. in Gen. 6:4 the unambiguous plural form “עלין” is erroneously parsed as a “peal participle masculine singular”. The same mistake also occurs in Num. 27:21, Num. 34:2, Due. 4:5.

 

Also in Gen. 23:10 the Aramaic verb “עלי” is correctly parsed as a “Peal participle masculine plural construct,” but in Gen. 23:18 the same verb in the same context is parsed as a “singular” participle.

 

This is what I found with one verbal root, “עלל”. How many similar mistakes will exist when parsing other verbal roots? Such mistakes in parsing makes grammatical searches inaccurate.

 

This is so poor I think the whole database will have re-checked for mistakes in parsing.

 

 

When you find possible errors in parsing, the best way to make sure they're fixed is to right-click on the word in question and select "Report a Correction" from the pop-up menu. 

Thanks!

[Accordance Enthusiast]

Thank you for your responses.

 

I have version 2.4 of the Wordmap, and it crashes every time I amplify from it!

 

Also, it is Accordance's responsibility to check for errors in the parsing of the tagged texts, not mine. If I found so many errors with one verbal root, how many thousands of errors will there be in the whole module?

 

You should really have the whole module re-checked, otherwise search results are guaranteed to be wrong.

[Daniel L]

I don't have the Wordmap, but the other tagged texts are full of errors. It is unreasonable to expect customers to report every error when they are so plentiful... unless Accordance wants to hire us as freelance proofreaders/QA testers. 💰 Come to think of it, I would seriously consider doing some remote work as a contractor.

[Fabian]

Years ago there was a Hebrew webinar with Helen. She found an error in the gloss, which she had done. Years later I asked if Accordance had fixed it. The answer was „no“ and they had no plans to fix it. 
Really😫

The morphology of the BHS-T is old. Outdated same with the one from the HMT-W4. But they don’t want to update it for royalty reason or whatsoever. You can get the newest one for theWord, but not for Accordance. Really 😫

[Steven S]

3 hours ago, Daniel L said:

... unless Accordance wants to hire us as freelance proofreaders/QA testers. 💰 Come to think of it, I would seriously consider doing some remote work as a contractor.

 

I was wondering if Accordance has ever considered open sourcing module development? That is, in the sense of making the module sources available in a publicly-available version control repository to which non-Accordance staff could contribute changes. My impression is that, unlike the application code, there isn't much, if any, Accordance IP in module development, so it wouldn't potentially help competitors by releasing the sources (but maybe there are licensing issues related to the publishers?).

 

I suspect there would be many Accordance users who would be happy to contribute fixes for their pet module issues (at least the ones that don't require application changes). Obviously, even if those users freely contributed their work, the cost would still be non-zero to Accordance because they would probably have to hire an additional staff member to curate the issues, review pull requests, merge them, etc.

 

Just a thought ...