Translators do it with dictionaries - or maybe through web discussions?

Thanks to J.K. Gayle's fascinating blog intriguingly entitled Aristotle's Feminist Subject on translation, feminism and rhetoric (and much more besides) I've been reading some fascinating posts on the Better Bibles blog. It's going to take me around about the rest of my life to go through all of the links J.K. has listed but it's a fascinating way in to some of the issues that translators of the Bible and other texts are trying to tackle. The various blogs document just some of the enormous effort and soul-searching translators go to to get texts to speak to us with the integrity, beauty and passion of the original.
One of the things that interested me in my brief perusal of the posts today is how those writing a post on a translation issue to do with gender feel they have to warn others in advance of this unpleasant subject matter and encourage people not interested (or enraged or bored??) by such isues to click away. Nasty disease gender issues, horrible thing feminism, click away folks.
In our feminist theology group there are often participants who ask whether we couldn't tone down the word feminist to feminine theology. Ah well, if that weren't the case I suppose there wouldn't be much left to do, discuss or discover.
Anyway I shall try and add some of the Bible translation blogs to my blogroll over coming weeks and must have a look to see what's available in a similar vein in French and German. One of the great things about the internet and blogging is that it links translators together in an ongoing conversation.