Comments on: comparing the five leading versions

By: Peter Kirk

Peter Kirk — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:18:00 +0000

One more point which has not been made above about why BBB authors and commenters focus on ESV: There is an active blog promoting ESV, controlled I think by its publishers. But that blog does not generally allow posts or comments which might compromise that promotional activity. So when people see the need to respond to posts on that blog, to correct matters of fact or interpretation, they tend to do so here. That was presumably the motivation behind this post, and behind a number of previous posts which have been less than positive about ESV.

By: The Exceptional Translations « Better Bibles Blog

The Exceptional Translations « Better Bibles Blog — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:03:17 +0000

[...] Better Bibles Blog ideas for improving Bible translations Skip to content AboutBlog authorsVersionsLinksTerminologyBookshelfToolsBlogroll « comparing the five leading versions [...]

By: The myth of the word-for-word translation « Bryon’s Weblog

The myth of the word-for-word translation « Bryon’s Weblog — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:24:13 +0000

[...] a comment » This post was prompted by another post on the Better Bibles Blog. It seems some translations are hinted at being better over others because one is word-for-word and [...]

By: Wayne Leman

Wayne Leman — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:05:56 +0000

Bryon, I think Glenn is saying that The Message is a (much) freer translation than most other English Bible versions. (Did I get your intended meaning right, Glenn?) Glenn is using the word “paraphrase” in the way in which many people refer to Bible translations which are “freer”, not very literal or tightly corresponding to the forms of the biblical languages. Before this usage language specialists used (and still use) the term “paraphrase” to refer to a restatement of some utterance within the same language. In this sense the Living Bible is a linguistic paraphrase since it is a rephrasing of the ASV (American Standard Version, not a translation from the original biblical languages.

Both uses of the word are commonly used today and deserve to be in English dictionaries.

By: Bryon

Bryon — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:29:36 +0000

Glenn,
Apologies but I’m not sure what you’re trying to communicate to me so I’m going to guess and respond from there.

In my view paraphrasing from other languages is still translating. Anytime you go from one language to another it’s still translating. An example I might toss out is working with Japanese. They have words that have no English equivalent. You can force in the nearest English equivalent but you never capture the true sense of the original.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:50:28 +0000

Bryon, The Message is a paraphrase and not a translation in the same sense as the others

By: Bryon

Bryon — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:19:13 +0000

It’s interesting this word-for-word push. Many times there isn’t a comparable English word for what’s in the original languages. In my use of the New Living Translation and this is revealed more so in “The Message” Bible and even the new “The Voice”, they’ll render a statement or maybe insert some meaning of what the original Gk/Heb word meant. Sometimes some give the impression that’s interpreting scripture and I don’t think that qualifies as interpreting scripture but more trying to bring the original language over.

I found an old excerpt from Bruce Metzger translation group.

…a purely word-for-word approach would be almost unreadable…Here, for example, is Mt. 6.99-10 in a word-for-word rendering:

Father of us who in the heavens, be holy the name of you;
Come the kingdom of you;
Become the will of you as in heaven and upon earth.

The English Standard Version’s base wording is the Revised Standard Version. The RSV is part of Metzger’s work and Metzger’s technique seems to be misunderstood by some today.

By: CharlesPDog

CharlesPDog — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:51:03 +0000

As usual you have answered my questions with patience. Thank you for the time you have spent.

By: Wayne Leman

Wayne Leman — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:55:30 +0000

Charles asked:

“Previously anti-TNIV people have presented similar papers at ETS” Have they received the coverage here that the anti-ESV people/person did?

BBB was begun after the errors in the TNIV were publicized, so they were not current news by this time this blog came online. But I do link to the lists of purported errors on my TNIV links website, which is linked from BBB.

If someone gave a scholarly paper on the TNIV or any other Bible version, we would be happy to feature it here, with their permission, of course. We have featured most English Bible versions here at one time or another. One of my most enjoyable series of posts was interviewing at least one member of each English Bible translation team. You can find each of these posts in the BBB archives.

I would guess that others versions have received more attention than the ESV has on BBB. I hesitate to post too much about the ESV because of the push-back we have received from those who like the ESV so much. Also, I am sincere in not wanting our posts to confirm the perception that some have, that the bloggers here “hate the ESV.” We don’t. No Bible version should be hated. It would not be a godly thing for us bloggers to hate any version and post about our hatred.

“It is not a place to flog Bible translators (see our commenting guidelines) for the great energy they expend to try to produce accurate, good quality translations.” That kinda was my point

Good. Does it seem to you that we at BBB and you are basically in agreement on this point? Or does it seem that we are flogging translators if we critique their translations?

By: CharlesPDog

CharlesPDog — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:15:49 +0000

“If you are referring to Mark’s paper, it was a gift to those who use English Bibles that Mark gave permission for his paper to be posted on BBB.”

I was, I guess I just haven’t seen such an extensive coverage of any other topic, for example

“Previously anti-TNIV people have presented similar papers at ETS” Have they received the coverage here that the anti-ESV people/person did?

“It is not a place to flog Bible translators (see our commenting guidelines) for the great energy they expend to try to produce accurate, good quality translations.” That kinda was my point