John said: There are plenty of people who will never learn Greek that would like to have a translation that is as close to the Greek as possible.

As a Bible translator, I find the ESV to be quite useful when I want to read through a section quickly and see the underlying Greek words, forms and structures.

But there aren’t many people who are trained well enough in principles of Greek discourse who can understand the significance of the Greek word order, forms and structures. You said it yourself:

1. There are plenty of people who will never learn Greek.
2. They would like to have a translation that is as close to the Greek as possible.

And I say, if they haven’t learned Greek (and I don’t mean just 2 years at Bible college), a translation that is close to Greek will only mislead them.

I’m not just talking about a knowledge of Greek idioms. Language is so much more than that. Unless the reader can identify and understand the significance of Greek register, collocation, focus, style, etc., etc., he or she will end up reading English register, collocation, focus, style, etc., etc., into the ‘transparent’ Greek text.

This paper is dismal. Is the “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” not contextually indicative that “one word” is a command? Yes it is. Furthermore English does use “word” as “command”, and all the time. “What’s the word”, “the final word on..”, and many other expressions. [rolls eyes again.]

The ESV revised many, but not all, of the obsolete archaic negative word orders, as in:

Nahum 8 “Rejoice not over me” (ESV)

The NASB, as far as I know, does not use any of those old negative word orders. Note:

Nahum 8 “Do not rejoice over me” (NASB)

That word order was already obsolescing in 1611 A.D. when the KJV was published. By 1650 the current negative word order was the standard.

I do not understand why the ESV team did not complete the job of revising the old order to the standard word order. Perhaps, as you say, some people find it beautiful.

Is that the conclusion you draw as well?”

Wayne, that’s not the conclusion I would draw. Instead, I’m sure that the ESV committee examined every one of those verses and instead of “missing opportunities” consciously chose what was they felt was the best translation according to their own translation
philosophy. They were trying to stay more in line with the Tyndale/KJV tradition and were actually reacting at times against the NRSV “improvements”. Now I would agree that there are a lot of unnecessary archaisms, etc. left in the ESV. However, it is obvious that there are many, many thousands of people who understand and love those archaisms. Thus, for that very large segment of the convservative wing of Christianity “biblish” is actually something that they understand and that is also very much a part of “their” English – just in the same way that it was so much a part of the English of almost the entire English speaking world up until fairly recent times. Such Bibles will continue to be their primary source for learning God’s word and both their children and those who come into their churches will learn that same beautiful “biblish” while they also learn the truth of God’s word. Of course, beauty is to a great extent in the eye of the “beholder” (or, should we say instead “looker”? I think not.)

I completely agree.

I use the word use when referring to how a person “reads” a literal (ie. transparent) translation for exactly the above reason. I believe the skill set needed to use a transparent version is much more than just the skill of reading. One must be able to process the unique, lexical and grammatical forms with much more conscious analytical effort than reading.

And, please note, I didn’t say simply reading because I think a number of topics dealt with by the Bible require more mental effort than cozying up by the fire with a good book. But, it’s reading nonetheless.

This certainly doesn’t make me an “ESV hater.” I think we need analytical versions. However, the ESV claims to use good English–thus the ‘E’ in ESV. I think Mark’s scientific analysis clearly suggests there needs to be improvement in the English.

I don’t hate any translation; however, any translation that tries to simultaneously accomplish transparency AND good English suffers from linguistic compromise.

I wonder what a methodology would look like that seeks to answer the question, “How well does translation XYZ support the analysis of original meaning?” This would help us get our minds around a definition of quality related to transparency. We need a metric here, too.

I partially wonder if you are referring to me with your statement about an ESV hater. I can imagine why I might give that impression with my comment about the ESV translators failing at fulfilling their stated purpose. But I do not hate the ESV. At the very most, I would say merely that the preface of the ESV is an impossible dream. I’m not sure that any translation could reach that goal – both the transfer of both meaning and form into the target langauge. I don’t think its possible. I’ve used the ESV since 2003 – my copy is old enough to still say that Laban’s goats were in charge of his sons – and I continue to use it along with about a dozen other translations.

All this to say, again, I don’t hate the ESV either.

I think it is clear that we have an ESV hater on this blog. It seems the hatred for the ESV continues to grow and grow.

Brent, I’m an equal opportunity Bible translation evaluator. I have sent hundreds of translation examples which need improvement to the TNIV and ESV teams. I was employed to give this kind of feedback to the HCSB team. I have sent the same kind of feedback to the NLT team.

I am passionate that the English speaking public should have access to English Bibles which are not only accurate but are also worded using English which is considered good quality by the majority of native English speakers around the world.

I would invite you to read my quantified studies of the best-selling English Bible versions today. I try to be as fair as possible with each version. And I try to base my evaluations on specific examples, the same way that Mark Strauss did in his paper.

If I am wrong in my evaluations of the ESV, I would invite you or anyone else to submit findings which we can post on this blog, indicating where we are wrong about the quality of English in the ESV, which was the version in focus in Mark’s paper for the ETS conference. Other versions have been the topic of other papers at this ETS conference and conferences in preceding years.

It is a good thing to work toward improvement of Bible translations anywhere in the world, including for English speakers.