Proverbs and Phrases of Biblical Origins - I believe that the
obligation of every translator is to find an equivalent of the
phrase (provided the use of the phrase contextually agrees with
its biblical meaning) that is normally used in the target
language. That is why a simple word-for-word translation
sometimes doesn't help and can be absolutely incomprehensible to
the target audience. This is especially true for Russian
proverbs, which come from the old Slavic translations of the
Greek version of the Bible. Russian proverbs and often-used
phrases from the Bible contain some old Slavic words, which are
not understandable to modern Russian people, except in the
context of the full proverb and may be absolutely unknown to
non-Russian translators. For example, the Russian equivalent of
the phrase like a lamb (in the biblical meaning of the context)
is аки агнец, where both words are rarely used in modern
Russian; they can be found together in contemporary Russian
literature but only in this phrase and often hav