graymouser

I know I've read around here that the books of the Bible are often "cleaned up" in the act of translation, making grammar, etc. clearer to the reader than in the original. Is there a source that deals with this, and/or provides a more "accurate" if less grammatically correct rendering of the works?

-Wayne

spin

There are translations which attempt to be literal at the cost of good English. Young's Literal Translation is an example.


spin

Chris Weimer

I prefer the YLT to any translation today. However, for all its faults, the KJV does remain fairly literal, often agreeing with the YLT. Those are the only two English translations I have by my side when I do research.

Peter Kirby

So-called literal translations lull you into thinking that your interpretation of the English (so-called literal) translation represents the meaning of the text better than your interpretation of any other English translation. When, indeed, another translation such as the Jerusalem Bible or the New English Bible could have put a lot more thought into representing the sense of the Greek or Hebrew for a contemporary English reader. (And I don't mean by expansion such as in the Amplified Bible, which I wouldn't recommend for study, but by considering the usage and context instead of just doing something that could conceivably be done by a machine: substituting the same English word for the same Greek word all the time and in the same word order, a 'thinly veiled guide to the Greek' that is really most useful if and only if you know Greek and also consult the Greek.)

A free one on the 'net is the New English Translation that has a lot of translator's notes. One translator's note is worth more than several tendentious translations, I would say. There is a series of "UBS Handbooks" for the New Testament that consist of nothing but translator's notes, which are very helpful if you need some help and/or don't have facility with the language. Sometimes it can be hard to represent the sense in any conceivable translation; there just isn't that one right word that will capture the same range of meaning. That's where a grammatical-critical commentary or one of these "UBS Handbooks" will help.

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

Chris Weimer

True Peter. If you can't work with the actual text itself, all knowledge is merely secondary to those who can.