How to best translate the New Testament

[pjohns]

It remains an ongoing debate: Is it better to translate the New Testament (from the Koine Greek) word-for-word or sense-for-sense?

In Colossians 3:12, for instance, the apostle Paul refers to "bowels of mercies" (at least, in the King James Version; which amounts to a word-for-word translation).

The Revised Standard Version, on the other hand, has "tender compassion" here; and that is a sense-for-sense translation.

The problem with a verbatim translation, it seems to me, is that many people may be scratching their respective heads, wondering just what the phrase, "bowels of mercies," actually means.

In fact, the ancient Hebrews viewed the bowels as the seat of compassion (or tenderness). (Please do not laugh; we "sophisticated," twenty-first-century Americans, view the heart as the seat of love--even though it is merely a blood pump.)

Some newer translations solve this problem by giving the sense-for-sense translation in the text, and the word-for-word translation in a footnote.

Of course, the opposite could also be done.

What do others think is most appropriate here?

[Private Pickle]

It remains an ongoing debate: Is it better to translate the New Testament (from the Koine Greek) word-for-word or sense-for-sense?

In Colossians 3:12, for instance, the apostle Paul refers to "bowels of mercies" (at least, in the King James Version; which amounts to a word-for-word translation).

The Revised Standard Version, on the other hand, has "tender compassion" here; and that is a sense-for-sense translation.

The problem with a verbatim translation, it seems to me, is that many people may be scratching their respective heads, wondering just what the phrase, "bowels of mercies," actually means.

In fact, the ancient Hebrews viewed the bowels as the seat of compassion (or tenderness). (Please do not laugh; we "sophisticated," twenty-first-century Americans, view the heart as the seat of love--even though it is merely a blood pump.)

Some newer translations solve this problem by giving the sense-for-sense translation in the text, and the word-for-word translation in a footnote.

Of course, the opposite could also be done.

What do others think is most appropriate here?

Don't.

[Standing Wolf]

I think it depends on whether you're reading for instruction or for the poetry. If you want or need to know, as exactly as possible, what the writer was referring to or what he meant, a more modern translation, like the NIV or the NAB, is best. If you are looking for passages that strike a familiar chord and sound "Biblical", go with the KJV or Douay-Rheims.

[pjohns]

I think it depends on whether you're reading for instruction or for the poetry. If you want or need to know, as exactly as possible, what the writer was referring to or what he meant, a more modern translation, like the NIV or the NAB, is best. If you are looking for passages that strike a familiar chord and sound "Biblical", go with the KJV or Douay-Rheims.

The only problem with the Douay Version (a Catholic version) is that it--like its predecessors--is based upon Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate, rather than upon the original Greek itself.

Of course, the Jing James Version (translated in 1611--just two years after the Douay Version) has its own problem: It is based upon the Textus Receptus (or Received Text), which does not include such subsequently discovered documents as Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (both uncial manuscripts from the mid-fourth century; and the oldest and best uncials that we currently possess).

[waltky]

Not that I've read all the versions available...

... but the Berkley version seems closer to...

... modern day English than others.