Types of Bible translation

The work of translating the Bible began around 250 B.C. when a group of Jewish scholars translated the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) into Greek because many Jewish people were living in places where Greek was the everyday language. Since that first Bible translation, the words of both the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament have been translated into hundreds of languages. These languages include ancient languages (like Coptic, Arabic, Latin, and Syriac), as well as more recent, modern languages (like Portuguese, Russian, Navajo, Danish, Spanish, and English). The purpose behind all these Bible translations is exactly the same: to put the words of the Bible into a language that people will understand [11].

As Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, the original languages of the Bible, have idioms and concepts not easily translated, there is an on going critical tension about whether it is better to give a word for word translation or to give a translation that gives a parallel idiom in the target language. For instance, in the English language Catholic translation, the New American Bible, as well as the Protestant translations of the Christian Bible, translations like the King James Version, the New Revised Standard Version, and the New American Standard Bible are seen as fairly literal translations (or "word for word"), whereas translations like the New International Version and New Living Translation attempt to give relevant parallel idioms [9]. The Living Bible and The Message are two paraphrases of the Bible that try to convey the original meaning in contemporary language. The further away one gets from word for word translation, the text becomes easier to read while relying more on the theological, linguistic or cultural understanding of the translator, which one would not normally expect a lay reader to require.

A variety of linguistic, philological and ideological approaches to translation have been used, including: the literal or essentially literal translation [6]is the next stage in the spectrum of Bible translation. The word-for-Word translation philosophy (essentially literal) translation seeks to render the original language words and style into a corresponding English word and style. Again, they seek to retain the original syntax and sentence structure, and the style of each writer as far as possible. King James Version, 1611 (KJV); American Standard Version, 1901 (ASV); Revised Standard Version, 1952 (RSV); New American Standard Bible, 1995 (NASB); English Standard Version, 2001 (ESV); the Lexham English Bible, 2010 (LEB); the dynamic equivalence translation or functionalequivalent [21] is the next stage in the spectrum of Bible translation. The thought-for-thought translation philosophy (dynamic equivalent) seeks to render the biblical meaning of the original language text as accurately as possible into an English informal (conversational) equivalent. Today’s English Version, 1976 (TEV, GNB); Contemporary English Version, 1995 (CEV); New Living Translation (second edition), 2004 (NLT); paraphrase translations [24] are at the furthest removed from the interlinear stage. The translators of these Bibles, if we dare to call them such, render the original language into the target language as freely as they feel it needs to be, with the target audience being their most important concern. The Living Bible, 1971 (TLB); The Message Bible, 2002 (MSG); the interlineartranslation [23] - this translation could be known as a hyper-literal translation. This translation follows the original language without and concern for English grammar and syntax. Beneath the Hebrew or Greek words of the original language text, depending upon which testament you are working, the lexical English equivalent is placed.―The Greek New Testament, 2004 (UBS4); The Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 2004 (NA27); The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, 2008-2010 (LGNTI); The Lexham Hebrew-English Interlinear Old Testament, 2004 (LHB).

A great deal of debate occurs over which approach most accurately communicates the message of the biblical languages' source texts into target languages. Despite these debates, however, many who study the Bible intellectually or devotionally find that selecting more than one translation approach is useful in interpreting and applying what they read. For example, a very literal translation may be useful for individual word or topical study, while a paraphrase may be employed for grasping initial meaning of a passage. In addition to linguistic concerns, theological issues also drive Bible translations.

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