Article by Bill Mounce (original source here)

I saw a chart the other day that mapped out how “accurate” different translations are. Unfortunately, based on the translations that were deemed “accurate,” you could see that the author had a defective view of what “accurate” means.

The old adage is that you measure what you value. If you value the replication of words, then the most formal equivalent translations will win.

I am only somewhat amused at the marketing of the Bible that champions what they call “optimal equivalence,” and surprise, surprise, they are the most optimally equivalent translation. The problem with their marketing is that I know the programmer who did the math, and his work is based on a reverse interlinear approach that sees the purpose of translation to be the replication of the words. You measure what you value.

But two things happened to me the last couple days that illustrate the real issue. This morning I was driving to the gym and saw a construction truck in front of me with the sign, “Construction Vehicle. Do Not Follow.” Now, if a German friend who didn’t speak English were riding with me and wanted to know what the sign was, how should I translate it?

The problem, of course, is that the sign does not say what it means. How can you not follow the truck in front of you? Once the truck is on the road, does the road have to be vacated until it leaves the road? Of course we understand that it means, “Do not follow closely.” So what would be an accurate translation? If you said, “Folge nicht,” would that be an accurate translation for your friend? Or would you have to say, “Folge nicht genau”?

It’s kind of like a stop sign. The last thing it means is stop. It means, stop, and when it is your turn go; otherwise, you would never leave the intersection.

The second thing that happened was that I was translating Philippians 2 with Martin (a friend) and we came to 2:13. “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work on behalf of his good pleasure (ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐδοκίας).” What is an “accurate” translation of the verse? Every major translation says “his good pleasure,” even though the possessive pronoun αὐτοῦ does not occur. The KJV and NASB put “his” in italics, which is not technically accurate because we know that ὁ (τῆς) can function as a possessive pronoun, and the fact that it is unusual to have ὁ in a prepositional phrase clearly shows that ὁ is functioning as a possessive.

So what is more “accurate”?

“On behalf of the good pleasure”
“On behalf of his good pleasure”
“On behalf of his good pleasure”
#1 isn’t accurate since it doesn’t mean anything in context. What does “the” refer to?

#2 isn’t accurate since “his” is present in the Greek as τῆς.

#3 is accurate since is accurately conveys the meaning of ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐδοκίας.

My point is this. If someone thinks that accuracy in translation means they replicate words, then the conclusion is foregone. If someone thinks that accuracy is a matter of meaning, then it leaves the question open for a positive debate on which translation is the most accurate.

Should We Capitalize Divine Pronouns?

My Bible of preference (the main one I use in study and preaching) is the English Standard Version (ESV). While there are a great many things about it I like such as its accuracy and readability, one things that I must admit really bugs me, is the lack of the use of capitals when God is the subject in the sentence. In other words, God is referred to as “he” rather than “He”.

In contrast to this, the NASB (New American Standard Bible) uses “He” rather than “he” when referring to God. I like that. That is what I grew up with and I like this feature. When reading the text, the reader is readily aware of who is being addressed in the verse. No mental work is necessary to work out if God is being referred to; its all laid out by the use of “He.”

Having said that, Bill Mounce makes some fair points as to why the ESV and other translations do not make use of “He.” While I might still not like this particular feature of the ESV, it is helpful to know why things are as they are. Certainly, it is NOT because the ESV translators wish to dishonor God in any way, and I am grateful for that. Here’s an explanation:

by Daniel B. Wallace (original source ironically, even some biblical scholars who should know better continue to tout word-for-word translations as though they were the best. Perhaps the most word-for-word translation of the Bible in English is Wycliffe’s, done in the 1380s. Although translated from the Latin Vulgate, it was a slavishly literal translation to that text. And precisely because of this, it was hardly English.

Similar to the first point is that a literal translation is the best version. In fact, this is sometimes just a spin on the first notion. For example, the Greek New Testament has about 138,000–140,000 words, depending on which edition one is using. But no English translation has this few. Here are some examples:

RSV 173,293

NIV 175,037

ESV 175,599

NIV 2011 176,122

TNIV 176,267

NRSV 176,417

REB 176,705

NKJV 177,980

NET 178,929

RV 179,873

ASV 180,056

KJV 180,565

NASB 95 182,446

NASB 184,062

NLT, 2nd ed 186,596

TEV 192,784

It’s no surprise that the TEV and NLT have the most words, since these are both paraphrases. But the translations perceived to be more literal are often near the bottom of this list (that is, farther away from the Greek NT word-count). These include the KJV (#12), ASV (#11), NASB (#14), NASB 95 (#13), and RV (#10). Indeed, when the RV came out (1881), one of its stated goals was to be quite literal and the translators were consciously trying to be much more literal than the KJV.

Some translations of the New Testament into other languages:

Modern Hebrew NT 111,154

Vulgate 125,720

Italian La Sacra Bibbia 163,870

Luther 169,536

French Novelle Version2 184,449

La Sainte Bible (Geneve) 185,859

3. The King James Version is a literal translation. The preface to the KJV actually claims otherwise. For example, they explicitly said that they did not translate the same word in the original the same way in the English but did attempt to capture the sense of the original each time: “An other thing we thinke good to admonish thee of (gentle Reader) that wee have not tyed our selves to an uniformitie of phrasing, or to an identitie of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done, because they observe, that some learned men some where, have beene as exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not varie from the sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the same thing in both places (for there bee some wordes that bee not of the same sense every where) we were especially carefull, and made a conscience, according to our duetie.” Continue reading →

Dr. Wayne Grudem – The Benefits of Essentially Literal Bible Translation with Special Reference to the ESV.

Dr. Wayne Grudem – Benefits of Essential Literal Bible Translation from The Gospel Coalition AZ on Vimeo.

Wycliffe Reports 5.8 Billion People Now Have Access to Bible

An estimated 5.8 billion people now have all or some of the Holy Bible translated into their first language, and the Bible is now in more than 2,800 different languages, according to a recent announcement by Wycliffe Bible Translators USA.

“Last year, Wycliffe Global Alliance reported that 4.9 billion people could access at least part of the Bible in their first language. This year the number has grown to 5.8 billion,” Bob Creson, president and CEO of Wycliffe, told The Christian Post. “This represents tremendous progress toward our goal of starting a translation project in every language needing one by 2025.”

Creson also told CP that technological advances in areas like translation are “a critical role in speeding up the translation process.”

“Software like Adapt It automates some parts of the translation process, dramatically cutting down the time required to produce first drafts in related languages,” said Creson.

“We have also adapted a cluster-project model for translating. Rather than developing each translation independently, cluster projects bring similar languages together so translators can share skills and insights with each other.”

Wycliffe Global Alliance, which is comprised of over 120 organizations from more than 60 nations including Wycliffe USA, broke the statistics in a press release.

“There are about 7000 languages in active use and at least one book of Scripture exists in almost 2,900 of these languages,” noted WGA. “At least 1.3 billion people do not have the full Bible available in their first language. Over 634 million of these have the New Testament; others have portions or at least some level of work begun.”

The Wycliffe organization credited efforts like YouVersion’s Bible App, Faith Comes by Hearing audio Scriptures and the “JESUS” film in using twenty-first century technology to reach out to remote regions.

“Though there has been astounding progress toward complete global Bible access, there is a lot of work to be done to reach the 1.3 billion people around the world without the full Bible,” commented Creson to CP. “God has been faithful in bringing the people and technology required to complete this mission, and we’re confident that someone alive today will start the last new Bible translation project.”

In giving some pointers to help people in their choice of which Bible to use, I wrote this some time back:

Our generation is so blessed. In contrast to former periods in history where access to the word of God was very rare, there are many good Bible translations available to us in the English language today. How we thank God for this. It is simply a fact of history to say that many have paid the ultimate price (forfeiting their very lives) so that we would have access to the word of God in our native tongue.

Because there are so many translations available to us, if the version used from the pulpit is not the same one we have brought to the service it is often difficult to follow a preacher’s sermon. Therefore, it may be helpful to know that we mainly use the English Standard Version of the Bible (ESV) in our services at Kings Church here in Phoenix. I like it both for its diligent effort to be true to the original text (Hebrew in the Old Testament, apart from a small portion of Aramaic in the book of Daniel, and koine Greek in the New) and for its great readability. Usually one of these things suffers in Bible translation, but this is not the case with the ESV. It is both highly accurate and easy to read, and these features make it a remarkable translation.

Here’s a two minute video where other pastors, teachers and authors testify to this:

Having said that, it is important to understand that there is no perfect Bible translation. Here’s an excerpt from something written by Sean Harrison (an editor for the NLT translation) explaining why this is the case:

… What is translation? What does it mean to represent a text in a different language from the one in which it was written? How should this be done in the most accurate way?

One of my favorite examples of the problem of translation is a joke that Russian speakers of English and English speakers of Russian will appreciate, and almost no one else (some of the funniest jokes under the sun involve translation between two languages). The Russian word for “wristwatch” is the same as the word for “hour of the day.” In the joke, two Russians who speak poor English meet each other on the streets of London. To show off his good English, the first man says to the second, “How many watch?” (i.e., What time is it?). To which the other replies, “Six watch.” The joke ends when one asks the other (and now I’m translating the joke from ESL to standard English), “So, did you finish studying at Moscow State University?” (the elite university where students would learn English to fluency). To which the other replies, “You’re asking?” (i.e., Of course – can’t you see how great my English is?)

Here is the actual text of the joke:

How many watch?
Six watch.
Such much!
For whom how? [said with a shrug]
Finish MGU?
Asking! [said with mock scorn]

The “English” that these two Russian speakers are using is incomprehensible to you and me without a lot of explanation. But it is an exact, word-for-word representation of excellent standard Russian.

Is it really English? A good definition of translation is, A representation of a source language text in a different language, such that native speakers of that target language will understand the meaning of what was said in the source language. By this definition, a translation must actually get across the sense of each statement, not just the words. It must use the target language itself accurately, not some hybrid of the source and target language.

By this definition, the above representation of the joke is not in standard English, but in a language we might call “Russian ESL English.”

Here is a translation into standard English (which, of course, destroys the joke, because the point is that these guys are proud of their awful English):

What time is it?
Six o’clock.
So late!
Depends on whom you talk to, and in what situation.
So, have you graduated from Moscow State University?
You’re asking me? Can’t you see how great my English is?

(And now we see why they say, “Humor doesn’t translate.”) Please note the last sentence in particular: There is no equivalent for it in the “literal text” of the joke. But that sentence is most assuredly part of what the last question means – it is present in the context, and is present in what the speaker means. If it is omitted, part of the meaning might not be communicated, and the translation will be incomplete and inaccurate.

It is an unavoidable characteristic of translation that it involves interpretation. It is significant that the Greek word used to mean “translate” in the New Testament is the same word used to mean “interpret” (????????, herm?neu?; see, e.g., Luke 24:27; John 1:42; 9:7; Heb 7:2). Perhaps you have heard the saying, “All translation is interpretation.”

Here’s the point: In order to translate God’s words from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into any other language, we have to take into account all levels of meaning. There is no way around it: Translation is always interpretation. If the meaning has not been communicated as accurately and fully as possible in the language of the hearers/readers, then the translation is less than accurate.

The NLT was created with all of this in mind. The translators have attempted, as much as possible, to communicate the meaning of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of Scripture into excellent, contemporary English.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult (well, impossible) to include in a translation everything that is present in the context in which the text of Scripture was originally written. As a result, some of the meaning of the text cannot be communicated fully in a translation.

… We should realize that translation in inherently limited, but at the same time that God speaks clearly through translations (and Bible teaching, for that matter). Rather than seeking one “perfect” English translation, we should welcome all translations that seek to honor and glorify God by representing his words in all languages. And yes, we should work hard at making our translations as fully accurate as possible (which must involve the meaning, and not just the words, of the text.) The hope is that, as William Tyndale once dreamed, even a ploughboy (i.e., a worker, someone without training in ancient languages) will know the Scriptures fully and well.