Category Archives: natural English

Hearts and minds

September 28, 2012 – 2:57 pm

Mark 6:45-52 is the familiar story of Jesus walking on the water, which comes right after the story of the feeding of the five thousand. The narrator in v. 52 concludes that the disciples might have understood how Jesus could walk on the water if they had been able to really understand that he was […]

By David Frank | Also posted in Bible Translation, biblical idioms, Biblish, Greek, idiom, metaphor, semantics, translation accuracy, translation equivalence | Comments (59)

Norms and accuracy

June 23, 2012 – 4:34 pm

I’ve been absent for quite a while here. I’m on sabbatical and trying to finish not one, but two, books. Since I last posted I’ve been to India on a spur of the moment trip. One of my wife’s work colleagues got married and invited us to the wedding. So we went. I have for […]

By Rich Rhodes | Also posted in Bible Translation, gender, translation accuracy | Comments (8)

Translator in the translation

April 30, 2012 – 8:47 pm

This is an interesting meditation on Bible translation: http://www.lhm.org/dailydevotions.asp?date=20120430. First, it is a notice about yet another English Bible translation becoming available, and then a commentary on that. I’m not really aware of this new translation from Thomas Nelson Publishing, but Rev. Ken Klaus of Lutheran Hour Ministries reveals a few things he knows about […]

By David Frank | Also posted in Bible Translation, Bible versions, common language, idiomatic, invisibility of the translator, sacred language | Tagged | Comments (16)

CANA translation

August 7, 2011 – 3:17 am

Remember the first recorded miracle of Jesus? That’s right. He turned water into wine when the wine ran out at a wedding feast. Good Bible translation is like that miracle wine. Such translation can take words that are like water, good for you, adequate for understanding, but without much flavor, and make a miracle out […]

By Wayne Leman | Also posted in Bible Translation, Bible versions, idiomatic, translation accuracy, translation philosophy | Comments (17)

Vernaculars and Lingua Francas, Part Two: Translation Implications

July 1, 2011 – 8:47 pm

I have already explained something about vernaculars and lingua francas. They are not two types of languages, but two uses of language, depending on whether or not the language is the mother tongue of the speakers or is an “other-than-mother-tongue” that speakers use to communicate with each other. I wouldn’t say that there is a […]

By David Frank | Also posted in Bible Translation, Bible versions, common language, idiomatic, non-native speakers, source text, standard English, translation audience, translation purpose, vernacular | Comments (117)

Vernaculars and Lingua Francas, Part One: Foundations

June 27, 2011 – 2:18 pm

I have an interest in lingua francas (or linguas franca, or linguae francae, or whatever). The phrase means, literally, “language of the Franks.” The explanation is that from an Arabic perspective, all Europeans were “Franks.” In the first half of the Second Millenium, there was a specific language form called Lingua Franca, a Romance-based pidgin […]

By David Frank | Also posted in Bible Translation, common language, Hebrew, idiomatic, linguistics, non-native speakers, standard English, translation audience, translation philosophy, translation purpose, vernacular | Comments (120)

classy translation

May 11, 2011 – 8:57 pm

Over the years I have read statements by English Bible translators that one should keep word classes in a translation the same as those in the original text. You may be more familiar with the term parts of speech for word classes. So, if a word is a noun in a biblical language text, according […]

By Wayne Leman | Also posted in Bible Translation, translation equivalence | Comments (39)

Does a Translation Have to Sound like a Translation?

May 5, 2011 – 2:49 pm

I raise the question of whether a translation should necessarily and inevitably sound like a translation because there are people who seem to think that this is the case. That is, since the translation takes as its starting point a text in a foreign language–if it weren’t “foreign,” we wouldn’t be translating it, would we?–and probably […]

By David Frank | Also posted in Bible Translation, common language, idiomatic, standard English, translation audience, translation philosophy, translation purpose | Comments (54)

Translating Punctuation when there is No Punctuation to Translate

May 1, 2011 – 10:06 pm

Jonathan Morgan, on our share page, asks this, One thing I have heard a number of times is the assertion that “Greek has no punctuation”, and that as a result we can choose to repunctuate the *English* in any way we like, because “it’s all just been added by the translator anyway”. I’ve never been […]

By Mike Sangrey | Also posted in Bible Translation, idiomatic, literal translation, punctuation, semiotics, standard English, translation accuracy, translation equivalence | Comments (6)

Weird books in normal language

April 30, 2011 – 8:22 am

John Hobbins recently commented: It’s important to me that we understand that the Bible is a weird book that teaches things at great odds with the way we believe and the way we do things. A quaint translation like RSV or ESV helps in making that understood. The conclusion many people draw from reading a […]

By Dannii | Also posted in Bible Translation, common language, jargon | Comments (5)
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