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Thread: Word-for-word versus sense-for-sense

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    pjohns's Avatar Senior Member
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    Word-for-word versus sense-for-sense

    A serious question--and it has been a serious question for quite some time--is this: Is it better to have a word-for-word translation of the Bible, or a sense-for-sense translation?

    Before answering, one should consider that a word-for-word translation is not always (easily) understandable. For instance, in Colossians 3:12, Paul uses the phrase "bowels of mercies," as it is translated in the King James Version of the Bible.

    The problem is that most people probably have no idea just what this means.

    (The Revised Standard Version, by comparison, has "tender compassion.")

    By way of explanation, for the ancient Jews, the bowels were the seat of compassion. (We probably should not laugh too hard. After all, we "enlightened," twenty-first-century Americans consider the heart to be the seat of love--even though it is really only a blood pump.)

    Probably the most literal translation of the Bible is the American Standard Version, done around the turn of the twentieth century. It actually reads quite stiffly.

    At the other extreme is Good News for Modern Man (a.k.a. Today's English Version). It takes liberties that make me feel a bit uncomfortable.

    In my own view, the best method is a sort of compromise: the sense-for-sense translation in the text itself, with a literal translation contained in a footnote. (And this is not just a theory, either. Several translations do just exactly this.)

    What do others think?
    Last edited by pjohns; 10-02-2019 at 12:25 PM.

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    Lummy's Avatar Senior Member
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    I think it's very important that translation be as close as possible to the original text, whether the Bible, the Constitution, or any other document of profound import. Closely attending should be an explanation of the context in which it arose based on the best interpretation of the people, the times and circumstances in which it was written.

    Word-for-word is scholarly. Sense-for-sense is political (?).

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