Category Archives: translation philosophy

A Book on Literary Translation

November 4, 2011 – 1:18 am

For those of you who may have missed it, there is a new book on translation out. IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR? Translation and the Meaning of Everything By David Bellos It was reviewed in the NY Times Sunday Book Review last week. Find the review here. In brief, Bellos, himself a well-regarded […]

By Rich Rhodes | Comments (8)

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, natural English, translation accuracy | Comments (17)

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, natural English, non-native speakers, standard English, translation audience, translation purpose, vernacular | Comments (120)

Why biblical literature resists translation (guest post)

June 16, 2011 – 5:03 pm

A few weeks ago I invited John Hobbins who blogs at ancient hebrew poetry to guest blog at BBB the theoretical underpinnings of his preferred approach to Bible translation. In response, John has just posted on his own blog “Why biblical literature resists translation.” He has let me know that I am welcome to cross-post […]

By Wayne Leman | Also posted in Bible Translation, Biblish, metaphor | Comments (153)

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, natural English, standard English, translation audience, translation purpose | Comments (54)

Defining “general-purpose”

March 6, 2011 – 3:35 am

I used the term “general-purpose translations” before here, but I don’t have a clear definition of what it really means. It feels pretty intuitive to me however. I would classify translations such as the NIV, ESV, NLT, KJV, NKJV, NASB, NET and the Good News (among many many others) as general-purpose translations. The intended audience […]

By Dannii | Also posted in Bible Translation, translation audience, translation purpose | Comments (29)

It is easier for a hippopotamus to…

December 7, 2010 – 7:58 pm

I recently returned from Africa, where I was working with a translation of the Gospel of Luke into a language that has had no previous Bible translation and a culture that has had very little contact with Christianity. I was not responsible for producing the translation into this language, but I was responsible for evaluating […]

By David Frank | Also posted in Bible Translation, biblical idioms, idiomatic, literal translation, translation accuracy, translation audience, translation equivalence, word for word | Comments (40)

In which I rant about paraphrases

November 6, 2010 – 8:03 am

paraphrase n. a restatement of a text in different words, often to clarify meaning [Wiktionary] a restatement of a text, passage, or work giving the meaning in another form [Merriam-Webster] A rewording of something written or spoken by someone else, esp. with the aim of making the sense clearer; a free rendering of a passage. […]

By Dannii | Also posted in Bible Translation, Bible versions, revision | Comments (30)

A Call for Coherency Scholarship

January 1, 2010 – 6:00 am

David Frank posted Reflections on the nature of Bible translation. And I really like what he said. So, I thought I would interact with it a bit (and hopefully encourage him to post more). What he said there is why my “hobby-horse” is coherency. The underspecification of the text, and the resulting ambiguity, provides the […]

By Mike Sangrey | Also posted in ambiguity, Bible Translation, Pragmatics | Comments (7)

Reflections on the nature of Bible translation

December 29, 2009 – 12:12 am

I have been strangely quiet on this blog for a long time now. Part of the problem is that I don’t have much that I want to say about the particular wording of English Bible translations. I am much more interested in the bigger issues, like the philosophical, theological, theoretical, cultural and sociological dimensions of translation. I see […]

By David Frank | Also posted in ambiguity, Bible Translation, common language, idiomatic, sacred language, translation equivalence | Comments (12)
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