CEV – God Didn't Say That

The Microcosm of Bible Translation: Amos 5:15

[This is the first in what I hope will become an occasional series about the details of actual translation: methods, decisions that have to be made, compromises, etc.] Amos 15:5 The first part of Amos 15:5 reads (NRSV), “Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;” What goes in to that translation?…
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JoelMHoffman July 1, 2010 7

On James 2:23-24: Why Faith Without Works is Dead

James 2:23-24 uses the same root twice to highlight the point that Faith requires Works. But that important rhetorical device — duplication of the root — is lost in most translations. For example (NRSV): (23) …”Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” [Genesis 15:6] … (24) You see that a person…
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JoelMHoffman June 10, 2010 25

Growing Old and Fat in God’s Courtyard

Psalm 92:12 begins a series of verses that compare the righteous to trees: the people, like Palm trees, will blossom and flourish. They will be planted in God’s courtyard. And they will grow old and fat. What’s going on is this: In antiquity, most people didn’t get enough calories to live. Today (in the U.S.…
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JoelMHoffman May 7, 2010 8

What Wine and Wineskins can Teach Us about Text and Context

Bill Mounce notes (also here) that Classical Greek had two words for “new”: neos and kainos. We see them both in Matthew 9:17 (as well as Mark 2:22 and Luke 5:37), where Jesus relates that people “pour new wine into new wineskins” (NIV). The problem is that this translation (along with the NLT, CEV, and…
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JoelMHoffman April 28, 2010 13

John 3:17 and a Translation That Might Work

I think John 3:17 (like John 3:16) shows us three things: potential traps in translation, typical patterns of some of the common Bible translations, and the importance of paying attention to detail. The point of John 3:17 is pretty simple (even if the theology is deep): God didn’t send Jesus into the world in order…
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JoelMHoffman February 25, 2010 15

So, What? John 3:16 and the Lord’s Prayer

Scripture Zealot reminds us that the usual translation of John 3:16 is wrong. The Greek there doesn’t mean, “for God so loved the world…,” so the line shouldn’t read (NRSV) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have…
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JoelMHoffman February 4, 2010 40

Haiti and Jeremiah 25:7

Dr. Jim West’s comment that Jeremiah 25 is a good litmus test for translation — and his claim that the NLT doesn’t do badly — directed my attention to the NLT’s translation of Jeremiah 25. In light of some resent claims about the disaster in Haiti, Jeremiah 25:7 in the NLT jumped off the page…
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JoelMHoffman January 31, 2010 6

Being Clear on Being Clear

A post by David Frank on BBB has got me thinking about clarity in Bible translation. I think there are at least two kinds of clarity, and two times when we don’t want clarity. Clarity of Language The most basic kind is clarity of expression in the target language — in our case, the English…
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JoelMHoffman January 29, 2010 9

Top Translation Traps: Seductive Translations

Some readers want clarity (as in The Message or the CEV) in a Bible translation. Others want loftiness (NKJV), or even near incoherence (KJV). Others yet opt for chattiness (Good News). And so forth. I think what these approaches to translation and others like them have in common is that they put the proverbial cart…
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JoelMHoffman January 11, 2010 8

Translate But Don’t Editorialize

We just saw a case of an attempt to translate the pragmatics of a text instead of the text itself. In general, a text will have a variety of implications, morals, allusions, etc. I think that a good translation of the text will match the original with a translation that has similar implications, morals, allusions,…
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JoelMHoffman December 18, 2009 13

Tag: CEV