Adrian's Blog: Blogspotting the ESV, interviews and other posts
Adrian's Blog: Blogspotting the ESV, interviews and other posts
I posted the following comment to Adrian's post:
Categories: Bible translation, literal translation, word.for.word.translation, ESV, translation accuracy
I posted the following comment to Adrian's post:
Adrian, you said:(HT: Shane Reynor)
For me, I would rather have a bible that used masculine language where the bible uses masculine language even where the bible uses masculine language inclusively and our modern culture would not understand that language inclusively. Why? Quite simply because for my main translation I do not want one that does the work of interpretation for me. I want one that simply translates word for word, not concept for concept.
Adrian, I understand your motivation for your position, but you need to realize that this position leads to inaccurate translations. Even the ESV does not translate word for word when their translators recognize that doing so is not accurate.
Translating Greek adelphoi as English "brothers" is inaccurate when the Greek is referring to both brothers and sisters, which the ESV translators recognize is often the case in the New Testament.
Using the English word "brothers" when the Greek text actually means "siblings" ("brothers and sisters") is just as much of an "interpretation" as translating the actual meaning of the original text. In one case it is an accurate interpreation; in the other case it is an inaccurate one.
I think what your heart and mind are telling you to avoid are "interpretive" translations. These are translations which impose translators' opinions about what the biblical text means when there is no consensus that those opinions are the actual meaning of the text. The Living Bible paraphrase was an interpretive translation.
Every Bible translation, including the ESV, is an interpretation. Every time we find an English word to translate a Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek word in the Bible, we are interpreting. When your PM meets with the PM [sic, President] of Russia, there are always translators present. They perform a necessary service of "interpeting" for the two PMs, so they can understand each other when do don't speak each other's language.
Categories: Bible translation, literal translation, word.for.word.translation, ESV, translation accuracy
posted by Wayne Leman at 7:54 AM
3 Comments:
Quite simply because for my main translation I do not want one that does the work of interpretation for me. I want one that simply translates word for word, not concept for concept.
Yes, I find this kind of statement very worrisome.
Well said, Wayne. And I think that, on this issue, for the most part the TNIV does a grand job.
Tim Chesterton
(P.S. I've started leaving my surname because I've noticed there's another 'Tim' who posts here too!)
I wrote an essay "Moving through the Maze: Understanding Bible Translation" on my main blog:
www.realmealministries.org
Here is the address for the precise page on it:
http://realmealministries.org/WordPress/?p=60
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