Translating vs. Transliterating “Beulah”

Stephen of the ESV Bible Blog has blogged today on two approaches to translation of the Hebrew word "Beulah" in Isaiah 62:4. I prefer the ESV approach which is to translate the meaning of the Hebrew word, rather than transliterate it. BTW, Stephen's post links to a post by Mark Perry which stimulated Stephen's post. I recommend that you read both posts. There is interesting discussion about translation in the comments to Mark's post.

Translation is more meaningful than transliteration, whether it is transliteration at the word level or syntactic level, with importation of foreign syntax to English or any other translation target languge. There is a place for transliteration in some ecclesiological contexts where translation of a word such as Greek baptizw might cause some churches to reject the entire translated Bible. And for scholarly purposes there is always a good place for interesting transliteration. That is in footnotes.