Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: translation

  • Translating Puns

    Translating Puns

    Dave Black’s intermediate Greek grammar, It’s Still Greek to Me, is scheduled to be translated into Arabic. One of the features of that grammar is some of the humorous headers that are English puns. Dave wonders how those will be handled in translation.

    Anyone have suggestions? (Only humorous suggestions need apply!)

    While I publish many of Dave’s books, this is not one of them. The booklet with a very similar name, It’s All Greek to Me, is Dave’s brief biography/testimony, and I do publish that one.

    (Note: The featured image was generated by Jetpack AI, and one should not consider it to represent any puns, or likely anything else!)

  • Psalm 119:133 – Mastery

    Psalm 119:133 – Mastery

    Establish my steps in your word.
    Don’t let any evil have mastery over me.

    I like the rendering of the REB for this one, and in fact used the word “mastery” as they do.

    Make my step firm according to your promise,
    and let no wrong have the mastery over me.

    Psalm 119:133 (REB)

    Note that this translation is very different in what it prioritizes to convey than the translation I took from Seeing the Psalter in yesterday’s post. In that book, the emphasis is on the connections in word usage and in Psalm 119 on the acrostic. The REB emphasis is on conveying meaning to a modern audience. This is a legitimate difference in translations, but it is useful to be aware of the translators’ intent when reading.

    I’m very interested in this text, because it relates to a couple of theological concepts I use personally. One of these is the idea of mastery. You will be mastered by something. I’ll look first at a New Testament passage for this:

    When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness…. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification.

    Romans 6:20,22 (NRSV)

    This relates also to the two ways concept which is presented in Deuteronomy: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity” (30:15). You’re going to have one or the other.

    In Paul’s case he carries on with this subject in Romans 7 discussing this slavery and the liberation which he then expounds in Romans 8.

    Jesus says something similar in the Sermon on the Mount.

    No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

    Matthew 6:24 (NRSV)

    I’d also add Galatians 5:16-26 were we have the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit contrasted.

    Each of these text shows a binary choice as to where our loyalties will be, or whom we will serve.

    I wrote a note on these textual relationships earlier today. Here I’m bringing together concepts that were not originally intended to work together, nor is there a textual relationship between Deuteronomy 30:15 and Galatians 5:16-26. Yet I would bring them together in talking about this idea of a core approach to life which controls who we are. If you reference my note above regarding textual relationships, these are all in #6 and #7, things I have brought together, and not necessarily relationships I believe the authors would actually have noted.

    All this leads to a basic question: What drives you?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:131 – Panting

    Psalm 119:131 – Panting

    With open mouth, panting,
    I long for your commands.

    This couplet poses some challenges in producing a readable translation, even though there’s little doubt of the meaning and feel of the verse. Even Mitchell Dahood, usually very creative, translates in a fairly straightforward fashion: “With gaping mouth I panted, / because I longed for your commandments” (Anchor Bible on Psalms, volume II).

    Another good translation is this:

    Parting mouth gaping I sigh heavily
    for to your commandments is my longing

    Bob MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, p. 386

    Now I haven’t mentioned before that Bob MacDonald translates Psalm 119 as an acrostic in English, which helps give it more of the feel of reading the Hebrew text. Some constructions in Hebrew are shaped by the acrostic form of the whole poem. Hebrew syntax is more friendly to the creation of an acrostic than English, with somewhat more flexible word order, but there is still more common ways of ordering words.

    In this case, a little bit of apparent discomfort is conveyed by the wording, and I think Bob has caught that. The feel of reading the poetry has the sort of discomfort that relates to the state of mind described in the text. Bob notes that: “parting gaping, פער (p`r) gape with desire as a ravenous beast but gape needs help for the acrostic” (p. 389). Yes, it helps the acrostic, but I think it also gives us the feel.

    Translation is interesting. A translator is always presented with the question of just what to transfer in translation into the new language. Bob MacDonald, for example, takes a rare path of transferring the acrostic, which presents a number of challenges, especially in conjunction with other goals he has in conveying the relationship of words in the Psalm. You’ll need to read his book, Seeing the Psalter, to get a full understanding of what he conveys.

    It might help us to understand this process if we consider communicating about an area of specialty to someone who does not share our specialization. I help people with problems on their computers frequently, and most of the people I help don’t share the language or often the concepts I tend to use. In ordering to communicate, I have to try to speak in terms that can be understood not just by the non-specialist, but by someone generally computer-naive, by which I mean they really aren’t sure what a web browser is. They get pretty close to panting, longing to know just how to get something done, or even how to explain to me just what it is that they are seeing.

    Many times I have either followed up a conversation by remote access to the person’s PC or even a visit, and found that what I had imagined the problem to be was not even close. They had a completely different problem than I imagined. I’ve gotten better at this over the years, but the gap still occurs.

    In terms of God’s commands, or just right and appropriate action we can have a similar problem. We have principles in mind. We want to get things right, but our understanding just doesn’t stretch. Applied to our situation, the translation of principle into action can take an amazing amount of effort.

    There is an inherent disconnect in our communion with God. We do not perceive infinity. As Paul says, we see partially, we await what is perfect, we do not have it in our possession. It’s a good idea to recognize this struggle for God’s commands. It’s an appropriate struggle. It’s one of the reasons that we are directed not to judge. We know partially; we judge partially.

    Let’s keep the desire and lose the judgment.

  • Psalm 119:116 – Supported

    Psalm 119:116 – Supported

    Support me according to your word that I may live
    and don’t let my hope fail.

    As a note on translation, this verse is simply and sparsely expressed in Hebrew, which leaves some work to the translator in choosing precisely how to translate. Yet the overall result doesn’t change that much. Try comparing a number of translations. The words will vary, but the overall meaning remains similar.

    Sometimes we stress too much about translation details. It’s quite possible to get so hung up on precise words that we miss the message, which is unfortunate. I keep quite a collection of Bible translations and editions, and I deeply appreciate the vast majority of them.

    This verse fills an important role in the tapestry of Psalm 119. We find the psalmist grateful, determined, confident, hopeful, and fearful. We find him claiming accomplishments in one verse and calling for God’s help in another. The overall effect is a powerful picture of a person of faith carrying out life as one of God’s own.

    Our verse today covers much of this ground in one poetic couplet. The psalmist calls on God’s support that he may live. He recognizes the dependence on God for his very existence. If the creator and sustainer of the universe doesn’t sustain him, he can’t live. It’s as simple as that.

    At the same time he is expressing confidence. God’s sustaining power will provide life, and let him attain to his hope.

    Sometimes we have that kind of dual feeling. Confident, but feeling the need of support. Sports teams feel it with supportive crowds. The professional athletes are not underconfident. They know what they’re doing, but they’ll still acknowledge the value of that support.

    Sometimes we separate our efforts and what God does, but they are not so easily divided. If we hold that God is the creator, and that God’s creative power upholds the universe (Psalm 104 comes to mind), then we also know that our existence is dependent. At the same time, we know that those laws that God created are reliable enough that we don’t need to be concerned that the will end.

    For the believer, this covers everything, both physical and spiritual. The connection is there. Support me, and I will live. I hope, but I know that you, God, are the real hope, because you are the source and foundation of all hopes.

    Today, try to feel the support that God gives you. Look for ways in which he is taking you toward your greatest hopes.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • A Problem in Translation: Isaiah 3:12

    A Problem in Translation: Isaiah 3:12

    In a post on Facebook by Bob Edwards, I encountered an interesting case that illustrates some of the issues Bible translators face in choosing what precisely out of the meaning of a passage to translate and how to accomplish that. My point here is not to critique the critique of the ESV, but rather to look at this particular passage and how it highlights issues faced by translators.

    Biases Up Front

    First, my own biases, especially as they relate to this passage:

    1. I’m egalitarian in that I believe all people, irrespective of gender, should not just be allowed, but should be encouraged to serve in whatever capacity they are gifted for. In case anyone is in doubt, I do mean leadership roles, including pastor, bishop, or whatever title a position is given.
    2. I believe that the Bible conveys to us a message that is inspired by God.
    3. I believe the message is related through the experience and in the cultural matrix of those who receive the message. Thus to get God’s will for my own life, I need to hear God’s message in my cultural matrix. This message may call, and indeed I think it does call for a disruption of the prevailing culture.

    The Passage

    I’m going to ignore further heremeneutical points in how I develop #3 in order to address the issues of this particular passage.

    As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.

    Isaiah 3:12a (KJV, emphasis mine)

    The key word is “women,” which is translated in this way by a large number of Bible versions. The NRSVue changed the word to “creditors,” but prior editions also read women. Versions that do not read women include the NET and the CEB.

    So what is going on here? What leads to a particular translation of this word?

    The Text

    Well, the technical issues are rather straightforward, but one’s views on textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible will have some impact. The dominant position among translators has been to give priority to the Masoretic text (MT). There are some who argue for a higher priority on the LXX (Septuagint) and versions translated from it, such as the Syriac.

    In this case, the MT clearly reads “women.” The Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation (which I read from their excellent Jewish Study Bible edition), reads women in the text, with a footnote indicating that an emendation would produce “boys.” An emendation is a correction of the text based on internal factors, i.e., without full support of any manuscript. It’s a sort of proofreading of the text looking for things that a clearly copyist’s errors. In this case, the JPS translators did not think the emendation was well supported enough to be in the text, but thought it was worthwhile to let the reader know that there were alternatives.

    The variant translations in other English translations, however, are based on the LXX, which results in “oppressors” and “creditors,” with “creditors” replacing “women.”

    Those are some nice options. I like them. I much prefer them to “women” in the text.

    But what I like doesn’t settle a textual issue. Most of the translators are giving priority to the MT, and likely doing so because they consider that the most probable original reading. One can debate whether they are right, but what one believes about the rights and value of women should not be a basis for deciding on the text.

    I am absolutely not accusing those who have chosen a different reading to translate of allowing their biases to determine the translation. The LXX can reflect an earlier Hebrew reading, lost in the Hebrew manuscript tradition. It would take too long to go into details here. I’m looking at the choices translators made.

    First the Text, then the Translation Thereof!

    The first choice, then, is the text to translate. In this case, you have at least two options, along with some possible emendation of the text. (Note that one possible justification for a conjectural emendation is that there are multiple readings and these multiple readings may have grown from a difficult original which has been lost.)

    For those translators who chose to use the LXX text, conveying the meaning of the chosen text is fairly straightforward. There may be multiple views on what having creditors rule over you means, but it’s fairly easy to translate.

    But what if you believe the text says that “women rule over you” as part of a litany of the problems of God’s people?

    Clearly, most translators have chosen to just go with the word and perhaps provide a footnote. I’m not going to review interpretive notes in various editions, but they doubtless have some explanations for what they believe the passage means.

    Let me give just two options to illustrate the issue:

    1. A literal translation that may be misunderstood in a 21st century context
    2. A figurative translation that obscures the culture of the time in which the passage was first spoken/written

    If we go with #1, we convey accurately (assuming we made the right textual choice) the words that were spoken, but what happens in interpretation? It looks clear to me that this passage is not addressing women in leadership positions directly. Rather, it assumes that the audience will find being led by women to be objectionable, and thus uses this to convey the sad state of the country.

    My problem with this would be that we convey the source culture into the modern context without giving the reader adequate help in understanding the metaphor.

    If we go with #2, we then convey the way in which we understand the passage, but we obscure the original cultural context, and deny readers the opportunity to hear the Spirit speaking through the text in its original context.

    Adding a footnote is good and constructive with either option, indicating what one has done. Unfortunately, footnotes are much more often ignored than read.

    Conclusion

    Either option has the potential to lose some of the meaning. Depending on your primary concerns with the text, you will likely prefer one or the other, possibly vehemently. The difference, however, is in what the translator is most anxious to convey in translation.

    Here’s The Message for reference: “Skinny kids terrorize my people. Silly girls bully them around. My dear people! Your leaders are taking you down a blind alley. They’re sending you off on a wild-goose chase.”

    Ummm.

    Something is always lost in translation. The question is, what?

  • Translating Poetry

    On March 24, 2016, blog entry marked 11:40 AM, Dave Black talks about translating poetry and links to his essay on the topic from a Festschrift, available via Google Docs.

    Reading Dave’s comments about translating poetry reminded me of one of my favorite translations of poetry from any language to any other, Max Knight’s translations of Christian Morgenstern’s German poetry. You can find samples here. I particularly like Der Lattenzaun/The Picket Fence, but Die Trichter/The Funnels, which Knight translates twice, provides another good example.

    Translation is a creative activity. When the material is very technical, the room available for creative activity, or better the necessity for it, may be lower, but it’s still there. Communication is not easy, no matter what one is trying to communicate, and when one is trying to communicate many things (and often a good writer is doing just that), the translation becomes more difficult.

    In the case of Bible translation, we multiply these problems because we are trying to translate a variety of literary genres across a gap of history and culture, which, in addition, either have or have acquired theological meanings that may relate to times before or after their composition. There’s a great deal of freight in the text and hanging onto it for dear life lest it be lost along the way.

    Into this perilous swamp comes the translator, trying to jump from one foothold to another, always hoping the foothold is not the back of a sunbathing alligator. (Try translating that murky metaphor for comprehension by a desert-dwelling tribe. I dare you!)

    But I don’t see the difficulty of translation as a major problem for Christianity. The major problem I see is that we are afraid of the creativity of translation. We should, embrace it, enjoy it, learn from it, and live it.

    Now that I think about it, we’re afraid of the creativity of communicating, discussing, and embodying the message in our own language.

    As I read a passage like the first chapter of Ezekiel I see a prophet’s creativity challenged. Ezekiel struggles for words. (I wrote a bit about this earlier on the Energion Discussion Network.) One commentator “cleaned up” Ezekiel’s prose and made it rational and orderly, discarding a large portion of the chapter in the process.

    But Ezekiel the prophet is trying to be a translator for us, translating his experience of, his vision of God into terms that can communicate with us. It isn’t easy for Ezekiel. It isn’t easy for me. I don’t think it’s easy for any translator.

    I want the translator to be a good linguist, but I also want him to be able to feel and experience along with Ezekiel and then creatively transfer this vision of God to me as an English reader. Will I get precisely what Ezekiel got? No. Not a chance. But I can get a glimpse of God’s glory as Ezekiel did, as I hope the translator did, and as I hope is conveyed through a good, creative translation.

    Poetry especially deserves this sort of creativity. And we shouldn’t fear it. People often act as if any sort of creativity in Bible translation means the message is being lost. But that is our modern desire for a compendium of facts about God.

    I came out of my MA program in seminary with a compendium of facts and I promptly left the church. I came back struggling with texts I found hard to comprehend, hard to translate, and even harder to live.

    The struggle is greater than the catalog. Every. Single. Time.

    But the facts conveyed by a vision like Ezekiel 1 or a powerful, intricately structured poem such as Psalm 104 are actually relatively few. The glory conveyed is beyond comprehension. I’ll go for not one creative translation (even my own), but for many. I want to try to comprehend the “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and there’s no way I’ll do that with just the facts.

    God could have provided us with a systematic theology, carefully tagged with paragraph and subparagraph numbers, footnoted with additional explanations, structured so as to miss nothing. God didn’t do that. I think God did it intentionally.

    That’s why I’m less critical than others of Bible translators, less willing to say they got it wrong. It’s not that I think they are without error. It’s just that I have such great respect for their willingness to get in there and try.

    I think it would be wonderful if we all encouraged them and gave them the freedom to creatively pass to us the message they experience.

    And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:18, NRSV)

    Or perhaps:

    … And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (2 Cor. 3:16-18, The Message)

    Or perhaps …

    It’s not by our efforts to get it all right that we remove the veil and see clearly. It’s by turning to the Lord. The Lord is the one who can make us see clearly in spiritual things, because the Lord is Spirit. So when we look in this way, we can contemplate the Lord’s glory and that is what will transform us from glory to glory. (1 Cor 3:16-18, my paraphrase, applying it now, good until the next time I read it)

  • Thomas Hudgins Looks at Literal in Translation

    The term “literal,” when used regarding translation, can drive translators quite mad, I think. But it is a commonly used word in the pews and the hallways of churches. “We don’t take things that literally around here,” is something I hear regularly in United Methodist churches. Which leaves the question of just how do we take it, if we bother to take it at all, quite unanswered.

    Thomas Hudgins, in his post Thinking about What’s Literal says, “This whole concept of ‘literal’ is really misleading.”

    Go read his post and discover what concept of “literal” he’s talking about and why he thinks it’s misleading.

  • Good and Bad Translation

    Simon Cozens discusses good and bad translations (HT: Kouya) and concludes:

    So when it comes to Bible translations, I don’t really care, relatively speaking, about the methodology behind the translation. I don’t necessarily care if it’s literal or dynamic or whatever. The more important question is, is it a good translation or a bad translation? I wonder which the authors would have wanted.

    Any time I teach classes in church about Bible translations I include the note that the dynamic/formal debate is not a part of general translation discussion other than when Bible translation is at issue. When translating a sign, as Simon does in his post (I know no Japanese, so no comment on accuracy!), there are pretty clear objectives that define what a good translation is.

    And that’s the problem with Bible translation. We don’t have a clear objective. Well, to be more accurate we each have a fairly clear set of objectives, but we don’t agree on them. Some people want something that is clearly understandable in the target language. Others want to transfer idioms and cultural ideas from one time and culture to another. Others are concerned that the specific words are dictated by God, and thus believe that we must come as close as possible to reflecting even the wording of the source text. Yet others are concerned with literary issues and want to have the register of the source text reflected in translation. Hebrews should thus be translated at a higher reading level and with greater rhetorical skill than Mark, for example. (I might argue about literary skill, but those are terms I have heard in this discussion.)

    Without objectives, it is impossible to call a translation “good” or “bad.”

    Let me illustrate. Supposing I make a translation (or partial translation) of a text to help a new Greek or Hebrew student study. This translation would reflect as closely as possible the wording and syntax of the source text. I sometimes do this to provide a fill-in-the-blanks type of exercise in introducing students to new texts, such as using an LXX text with a New Testament Greek student. (I don’t teach in seminary. I’m always either tutoring a single student or teaching a small class at a church.)

    Contrast this with a translation of a text I might provide my grandchildren as I teach. In the latter case I’m going to be translating register, culture, and language. Is either translation a bad translation? Is it good? I think a translation is only good or bad in a particular context of usage.

    Nonetheless, Bible translators, and more importantly those who debate about translation, would do well to pay attention to what Simon is saying. Maybe we could learn a bit about our particular context and come to understand one of the major things that differentiates one translation from another … objectives.

  • Thoughts on Translating Psalm 22

    First, two warnings. I’m not going to go into detail on the numerous translation difficulties in Psalm 22 and this post results from a book currently in the final stages of release from my company, Energion Publications. So if you want to avoid the potential commercial side, skip this one. On the other hand, that’s the book cover to the left!

    The book is a collection of responses to the Psalms written by various members of my home church (First UMC, Pensacola). One of my contributions was a translation, and I chose Psalm 22 because of the numerous translation issues.

    This process underlined for me the number of different possibilities there are in translation. We accept pretty readily that a piece of literature has particular circumstances and purposes for which it is written. It has a setting. It has a background. This could be said of any act of communication, but especially of something written.

    Similarly a translation has a purpose, or perhaps multiple purposes. In this case, my translation was to fit into a collection of reflections. The ideal would be that it be in some way a reflection of what the Psalm has meant to me. Would that be a translation? In my opinion, yes.

    But my personal bias would suggest I make every effort to reproduce the original form of the Hebrew text and reflect the forms of Hebrew poetry in my translation. I suppose that would have been an acceptable approach—it would have reflected me as well as the historical text.

    But then I also thought about the uses of the Psalms in Christian worship. While I’m translating a Hebrew Psalm, I’m doing so in the context of a collection created by and for a Christian congregation. This may not be used in the liturgy of the church, but it might well reflect the church at worship.

    Thus I made a choice to allow the LXX and the Vulgate to have a greater than normal impact on my final translation, and while I reflected the sparseness of some of the Hebrew expressions, my effort was much more intended to make it easy for the modern reader to understand. At the same time I intentionally did not take all the foreignness and roughness out of it. Some of it sounds abrupt.

    Readers of the New Testament will find the passages the church has traditionally read christologically translated in fairly traditional terms. They’ll find a few mildly obscure passages still obscure. I felt a certain freedom in this regard since I can be certain that nobody will be using this particular translation as their standard, authoritative translation of the passage.

    I would again note that I find any claim that all translations must aim at just one thing to be unjustified. There is room for a variety of translation approaches and even the translation of a variety of texts. If my translation reflects the LXX in places, I remember that the LXX was the Bible of much of the early Christian community.

    What do I think of my own translation? That’s hard to say. It was an effort of several days and I could have spent a good deal more time on it than I did. In fact, it’s hard for me to decide that I’m done with such a translation. I guarantee that if I went over it at this moment I’d wind up making changes.

    My wish is that we could judge translations in terms of their aims and how well they accomplish them rather than against some ideal plan that all translations must follow. I like Clear Accurate and Natural, and generally commend that approach for people’s reading and worship Bibles. I like a close reflection of the forms and culture of the source for serious study.

    Approach must match occasion and purpose. Or am I allowed to use the word “must”? 🙂

  • The Best Bible Version is the One You Read

    Across the front cover of my book What’s in a Version? I placed the slogan that forms the title of this post. You might think it’s a strange thing to put on the cover of a book. I’ve used it in class as well. I’ve received more criticism for that one line than for anything else in the book.

    I’m in the process of revising the book (though it’s still available), but that one line is something that will not change. Yes, it’s a one-liner, and thus subject to a variety of interpretations. No, I don’t believe that anything that might masquerade as a translation actually is a translation. But there are very few things that I would say masquerade as translations, and there are many people who want to prescribe the Bible you should read.

    There are some facts regarding reading a piece of ancient literature. First, I didn’t live in the first century, when the New Testament was being written. I’m at least at one remove, because no matter how much I study Greek, I will never truly understand it in the same context and world as Paul did. Second, if you’re reading in translation, you’re not reading the original. This leads to my third point: Something is always lost in translation.

    But that means that something is always present in translation as well. The question is just what you’re looking for. For example, I prefer the more formal style of the Revised English Bible. I even like its Anglicisms. I spent much of my teens in a former British colony (Guyana), and I was born in Canada. Those things are comfortable for me and they give me a familiar feel.

    Should I therefore recommend that everyone read the REB? Hardly! For others, features that make it work for me may be a hindrance to understanding. Then there’s the question of just what it is that I want to understand, or more importantly that you want to understand.

    What seems to escape so many people who prescribe what a translation must and must not do is that it matters not what is there if the reader doesn’t understand. Admonitions to “get a dictionary” are both pointless, and in my opinion, arrogant. This kind of talk suggests to people that if they would just put in enough work, they’d be able to understand–well–what the talker believes they should want to understand. Maybe I’d prefer the clarity of the CEV of Jeremiah 22:29 to a translation that conveys the epizeuxis. It’s possible that I couldn’t care less about an epizeuxis. In point of fact, I care about the epizeuxis largely so that I can convey it’s meaning in another fashion. At the same time, I do not regard my particular aim as normative. If you want to convey the epizeuxis, by all means do so. It’s not better or worse, it just is what it is.

    This lack of concern for the readers–though I’m sure it’s advocates think they are advocates for the spiritual and intellectual well-being of their hearers or readers–is what I like to call the problem of the one-ended telephone cord.

    So I frequently frustrate inquirers who want me to recommend a Bible version. I always ask what they want to do with it, and to a great extent I want to know who they are before I will even attempt an answer, and then I’m going to leave it quite open-ended–what do you want? what do you read?

    Oh, and credit where credit is due. I was finally tipped to the point of writing this by a post from Kurk at Aristotle’s Feminist Subject, which is well worth reading. I’d also like to reference my Bible Translation Selection Tool, which tries to list Bibles in priority order according to preferences expressed by the user. I’ve been told both that this is much too complicated and also that it can’t be personalized enough, but thus far I haven’t had time to fix either problem, nor do I know that I could fix them both at once.