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C. John Collins

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Herausgeber: Crossway
Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
Sprache: Englisch

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Which translation do I choose? In an age when there is a wide choice of English Bible translations, the issues involved in Bible translating are steadily gaining interest. Consumers often wonder what separates one Bible version from another. The contributors to this book argue that there are significant differences between literal translations and the alternatives. The task of those who employ an essentially literal Bible translation philosophy is to produce a translation that remains faithful to the original languages, preserving as much of the original form and meaning as possible while still communicating effectively and clearly in the receptors' languages. Translating Truth advocates essentially literal Bible translation and in an attempt to foster an edifying dialogue concerning translation philosophy. It addresses what constitutes "good" translation, common myths about word-for-word translations, and the importance of preserving the authenticity of the Bible text. The essays in this book offer clear and enlightening insights into the foundational ideas of essentially literal Bible translation.

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Leseprobe

Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation

Published by Crossway Booksa publishing ministry of Good News Publishers1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Jon McGrath

Cover photo: Getty Images

First printing 2005

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version™, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible: New International Version.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Scripture references marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Translating truth : the case for essentially literal Bible translation /C. John Collins, Wayne Grudem, Vern Sheridan Poythress, LelandRyken, and Bruce Winter; foreword by J. I. Packer p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-58134-755-3 (tpb) 1. Bible—Translating. 2. Bible—Inspiration.BS449.T748 2005220.501—dc22 2005024571

VP 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Foreword by J. I. PACKER

Contributors

Abbreviations of Scripture Versions

1 Are Only Some Words of Scripture Breathed Out by God?Why Plenary Inspiration Favors “Essentially Literal” Bible TranslationWAYNE GRUDEM

2 Five Myths About Essentially Literal Bible TranslationLELAND RYKEN

3 What the Reader Wants and the Translator Can Give:First John as a Test CaseC. JOHN COLLINS

4 Truth and Fullness of Meaning:Fullness Versus Reductionistic Semantics in Biblical InterpretationVERN SHERIDAN POYTHRESS

5 Revelation Versus Rhetoric:Paul and the First-century Corinthian FadBRUCE WINTER

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE ESSAYS INCLUDED in this volume were first presented as papers at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in November 2004. The purpose of publishing these papers now as a collection is to encourage the ongoing, careful reflection on methodology and issues in Bible translation—that necessary work, which the Christian church is called to undertake, with fear and trembling before our sovereign, holy God, for the sake of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word.

We are grateful for the insights expressed in this volume on a variety of issues and from a number of perspectives. Each of the contributors was part of the fourteen-member Translation Oversight Committee for the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible, published in 2001.* We are likewise grateful to Dr. J. I. Packer, who served as General Editor for the ESV Bible, for his foreword to this volume, which provides a very helpful framework for understanding and carrying forward the discussion.

The words of the Bible are the very words of God, and so the work of translating these words is of utmost importance, with eternal consequences. As Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4); or as Peter confessed, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” John 6:68). The work of Bible translation may be undertaken only with fear and trembling and abject dependence on our sovereign, holy Lord, with the understanding (as noted in the preface to the ESV Bible) that, “We know that no Bible translation is perfect or final; but we also know that God uses imperfect and inadequate things to his honor and praise. So to our triune God and to his people we offer what we have done, with our prayers that it may prove useful, with gratitude for much help given, and with ongoing wonder that our God should ever have entrusted to us so momentous a task.”

Soli Deo Gloria!—To God alone be the glory!

—Lane T. Dennis, Ph. D.

President and Publisher

*For further information about the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible, please visit the ESV website at esvbible.org.

FOREWORD

IT IS ONE OF THE glories of God’s grace to a sinful world that he constantly speaks in and through Holy Scripture to Christian minds and hearts, as the Holy Spirit illuminates the ancient words and applies their message to us to meet new situations and needs. Digging into Scripture, therefore, is one of the most life-giving things believers ever do.

Evangelical Christians have always known this, and Bible study (meaning careful, prayerful, thoughtful reading and rereading of the text, with or without the help of books and notes) has always been the central feature of evangelical private devotion. The mainstream church’s Trinitarian, incarnational, historical-redemptive understanding of biblical faith—the only understanding, in fact, that the canonical corpus will yield—has been the interpretative base for this searching of the Scriptures from the start. For most of the nineteenth century, following the Evangelical Revival in Britain and the two Great Awakenings in America, the religion of the Protestant churches both sides of the Atlantic was essentially evangelical; the historic faith was faithfully taught by preaching, catechizing, and distribution of literature, and diligent reading of the King James Version both privately and in the family was a fixed point in Christian discipleship.

In those days, Christianity was strong. But in the twentieth century both the ministry of teaching biblical truth and biblical living and the discipline of feeding on the Bible at home crumbled away. As uncertainty about the contents of the Bible grew through the skepticism and revisionism of liberal scholarship, so interest in the Bible declined throughout the Western world. Today, adult members of churches in most cases have never been taught the Christian faith by anybody, and the Bible is to them a closed book—or, should they perchance dip into it, a bewilderment from start to finish. Back in Britain, almost two generations ago, I heard it declared that the minister’s first priority is to teach, and his second priority is to teach, and his third priority is to teach. More than fifty years of not doing this have inevitably hastened the decline of interest in the Bible and in effect promoted the sense of its irrelevance to modern life.

Facing this pervasive shrinkage of Bible knowledge and influence, many in the churches hoped that simplifying and streamlining public worship would bring people back to the life of devotion and that simplified and streamlined versions of Holy Scripture would bring people back to the habit of Bible reading. Neither hope has been fulfilled in today’s post-Christian West, nor seems likely to be. But both programs have been zealously pursued, and as a result the English-speaking world has before it not only the kaleidoscope of “blended worship” but also more translations of the Bible than this or any other language group has ever had. Surveying the translations produced within the past sixty years, we find that they fall into three categories, the third of which is an extension of the second.

The usual label for the first category is “word-for-word” or “essentially literal” translations. Understanding translation as the discipline of tuning in to writers of other times and other cultures, as well as of other languages, these versions aim to be as transparent as possible to the vocabulary, sentence structure, thought process, literary purpose, situational context, personal style, rhetorical strategy, and communicatory technique of each Bible author, within the limits that good English allows. This was the path traveled by William Tyndale and the King James Version (both with what by today’s standards was some license); and it is the path that is now traveled by the Revised Standard Version (with much literary skill but some academically inspired blurring), the New King James Version and the New American Standard Version (both with greater accuracy, but less literary grace), and by the English Standard Version, with the New Revised Standard Version, the New English Translation, and the Holman Christian Standard Version not far behind.

These versions are not, of course, word-for-word in any mechanical sense; they seek simply to catch all the meaning that the text expresses, book by book, section by section, paragraph by paragraph, and sentence by sentence, in a way that the original writer, were he with us today, would recognize as a full and exact rendering of what he sought to put across to his own readership, now expressed in clusters of English words that as far as possible match those that he used himself. Translations of this type require the reader to learn what he can about the ancient and in some ways alien culture in which the text is steeped, knowing that he will miss some of the meaning unless he does so. Plainly, these versions will yield their richest rewards when linked with the helps of an ongoing expository ministry in the pulpit, a commentary and Bible dictionary handy at home, and a heart passionate to know God.

The second category is usually labeled “thought-for-thought” or “dynamic equivalent” renderings. Here the translators’ avowed aim is to induce, directly and immediately, the same positive complex of compelling interest and intellectual, emotional, and volitional response that the original writers sought to trigger in their own readership, and the developed method is to modify the wording and imagery of the text as a means to this end. Lively English covering the semantic field of the original in a consistently colloquial way, bringing out its implications without being bound by its sentence structure, is the goal. Examples are the Good News Bible, the Living Bible and the New Living Translation (the latter a skillful, scholarly recasting of the former), the Contemporary English Version, the New Century Bible, and God’s Word. All are beamed first and foremost on adolescents and young adults who, so it is hoped, may be newly drawn into Bible reading by the brisk, vivid, even chummy way that everything is expressed.

The problem areas along this path are obvious. They all arise from the fact that what is being offered as a translation is trying to be an interpretative, evocative, applicatory paraphrase as well. To want to induce as clear an awareness as possible that the Bible story is the first part of our own story because the God of the Bible is God for us too is right, but a price has to be paid for this wholesale streamlining of Scripture. The danger is that by trying to be more than a translation, each “dynamic equivalent” version becomes less than a translation, in at least the following ways.

First, focus is blurred. Where the exact meaning of the text is elusive and more than one understanding is possible, this method requires a smooth rendering of the translators’ views that will leave readers unaware that any difficulty and range of options exists at all. When the text contains technical terms (and there are many such in both Testaments), the ideal of verbal informality will lead to an obscuring of their presence. (Example: “the righteousness of God” is a key technical phrase in Paul, most notably in Romans, but it does not appear in any of the dynamic equivalent versions that I mentioned, being paraphrased out every time.) If translating means expressing in another language the full meaning and character of the original as exactly as possible, this is under-translating.

Second, fidelity is restricted. When it is thought that a literal rendering would not be at once fully lucid to the casual reader, this method requires the substituting of present-day word pictures that may convey equivalent meaning with the same tone and thrust as the original had. But the reader, of course, will never know where this has been done or what it was that was changed, and evidently it is assumed that that does not matter. Does it not? When missionaries translating the New Testament for Arctic-dwellers designated the Lord Jesus Christ “the seal of God,” because their intended readers did not know what a lamb was, perhaps it did not matter, and perhaps it was the best that could be done. Whether that is so when the original is intelligible and the change is only for warmth and chattiness is, however, more doubtful. Example: the Hebrew of Ecclesiastes 9:8 translates as, “Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head” (ESV). The New Living Translation reads, “Wear fine clothes, with a dash of cologne!” The point being made is, enjoy life’s God-given enjoyments to the full. Is this change justified by the gain it brings in understanding? If the Hebrew words are not just the human writer’s choice but God’s own choice for communicating with us through what his penmen wrote, are changes of this kind justified at all? One begins to imagine wordsmiths like Ecclesiastes himself, and Isaiah, and Paul, looking down from heaven at our array of translations, and groaning again and again, “But that’s not what I wrote!” If translation means serving authors by making what they wrote fully available in other languages (and surely Bible translation, whatever more it is, is at least that), what is being done here is under-translating.

Third, foreshortening is imposed—cultural foreshortening, that is. Colloquial paraphrase, however dynamically equivalent, cannot but preempt recognition of the cultural gap between the Bible worlds (there are several: Egyptian, Palestinian before and after the Exile, Persian, Greco Roman are the main ones) and our own world of today. This is very obvious in relation to the dash of cologne in the example we have just considered. Distancing (that is, discerning the differences between our world and worlds of the past) must precede assimilation (identifying transcendent similarities that reach above and beyond the differences). Cutting corners here, in rendering literature from the past—the Judeo-Christian past no less than any other—is always under-translating.

The third category of latter-day translations may be called exposition-for-text, or expanded paraphrase, renderings. These elaborate and amplify what is found in the semantic field of each text and passage, just as a pulpit expositor might do. The best-known examples are both one-man efforts: J. B. Phillips’s The New Testament in Modern English and Eugene Peterson’s The Message. The danger with them, obviously, is that they may read into the text more than is actually there—a lapse for which the fitting name would be over-translating.

In the essays that follow the weaknesses and limitations of some latter-day versions are bracingly highlighted. Let it be said that no one is implying that any type of dynamic equivalent rendering is useless. Even if the hope that a retranslated Bible could create for itself a new readership outside the church proves to be a pipe dream, many in churches where Bible study was no big thing will testify that the easy-flowing modern idiom of this or that new version has made Scripture accessible to them, and has shown them its relevance for them, in quite a new way. The true verdict seems to be that for beginners in Bible exploration and study, the merits of the best dynamic equivalent versions outweigh their real limitations. But for lifelong personal reading, with meditation and memorization, just as for public reading and pulpit exposition in church, the better option will unquestionably be one of the essentially literal translations; and I hope I may without offense mention here the English Standard Version, which was deliberately crafted to fulfill all these purposes together and, I believe, does so.

—J. I. Packer

CONTRIBUTORS

C. John Collinsis Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where he teaches courses on Hebrew and Greek grammar and exegesis as well as Science and Theology. He has published numerous articles in technical journals as well as in The New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. He is the author of The God of Miracles and Science and Faith: Friends or Foes? (both Crossway), and of Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Presbyterian & Reformed, forthcoming).

Wayne Grudemis Research Professor of Bible and Theology at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Arizona. He taught for twenty years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he was chairman of the department of Biblical and Systematic Theology. He has published twelve books, including Systematic Theology (Zondervan), Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (coedited with John Piper, Crossway), The TNIV and the Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy(coauthored with Vern Poythress, Broadman & Holman), Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Multnomah), and The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Crossway).

Vern S. Poythressis Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he has taught for more than twenty-five years. He is author of Philosophy, Science and the Sovereignty of God(Presbyterian & Reformed); Symphonic Theology (Zondervan); Science and Hermeneutics (Zondervan); God-Centered Biblical Interpretation (Presbyterian & Reformed); and The Returning King: A Guide to Revelation (Presbyterian & Reformed).

Leland Rykenis Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College, where he has taught for four decades. He has published thirty books (including edited and coauthored books). Among them are Worldly Saints (Zondervan), The Christian Imagination (Baker), The Word of God in English(Crossway), and Ryken’s Bible Handbook (Tyndale).

Bruce Winteris Warden and Director of the Institute for Early Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World at Tyndale House, Cambridge, Fellow of St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, and Senior Research Fellow, Macquarie University, Sydney. He is editor of Tyndale Bulletin, and author of numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including After Paul Left Corinth (Eerdmans) and Roman Wives, Roman Widows (Eerdmans).

ABBREVIATIONS OFSCRIPTURE VERSIONS

CEV

Contemporary English Version

ESV

English Standard Version

GNB or TEV

Good News Bible: The Bible in Today's English Version

God's Word

HCSB

Holman Christian Standard Bible

KJV

King James Version

The Living Bible

MESSAGE

The Message

NASB

New American Standard Version

NCV

New Century Version

NEB

The New English Bible

NET

The NET Bible, New English Translation

NIV

New International Version

NIVI

New International Version Inclusive Language Edition

NKJV

New King James Version

NLT

New Living Translation

NRSV

New Revised Standard Version

REB

Revised English Bible

RSV

Revised Standard Version

TEV or GNB

Good News Bible: The Bible in Today's English Version

TNIV

Today's New International Version

ARE ONLY SOME WORDSOF SCRIPTUREBREATHED OUT BY GOD?

Why Plenary Inspiration Favors“Essentially Literal” Bible Translation

W A Y N E G R U D E M

I. INTRODUCTION

Is Bible translation a spiritually and morally “neutral” activity, something to be guided only by secular linguistic theories about translation of languages in general? And is it true that there is really no right or wrong, no “better” or “worse” in Bible translations, but only the subjective preferences of readers who happen to “like” one translation better than another? And is the Bible such a sacred and special book that no one should ever criticize anybody else’s attempts at translating the Bible?

Or might the Bible itself say something that is relevant to current debates about how the Bible should be translated?

I will argue in this chapter (1) that the Bible repeatedly claims that every one of its words (in the original languages) is a word spoken to us by God, and is therefore of utmost importance; and (2) that this fact provides a strong argument in favor of “essentially literal” (or “word-for-word”) translation as opposed to “dynamic equivalent” (or “thought-for-thought”) translation.

But first, some definitions:

A. Essentially Literal

An essentially literal translation translates the meaning of every word in the original language, understood correctly in its context, into its nearest English equivalent, and attempts to express the result with ordinary English word order and style, as far as that is possible without distorting the meaning of the original. Sometimes such a translation is also called a “word-for-word” translation, which is fine if we understand that at times one word in the original may be translated accurately by two or more words in English, and sometimes two or more words in the original can be represented by one word in English. The main point is that essentially literal translations attempt to represent the meaning of every wordin the original in some way or other in the resulting translation.1

Sometimes essentially literal translations are called “formal equivalence” translations, suggesting that they try as far as possible to preserve the “form” of the original language in the translation. I do not generally use the phrase “formal equivalence” nor do I think it is a useful phrase for describing essentially literal translations. The reason is that the word “form” places too much emphasis on reproducing the exact word order of the original language, something that just makes for awkward translation and really has very little to do with the goal of translating the meaning of every word in the original. (The label “formal equivalence” is often used by defenders of dynamic equivalence theory, perhaps in part because this makes it so easy to caricature and thus dismiss essentially literal translation theory as a theory that places too much emphasis on the order of words in the original language.)

B. Dynamic Equivalence

A dynamic equivalence translation translates the thoughts or ideas of the original text into similar thoughts or ideas in English, and “attempts to have the same impact on modern readers as the original had on its own audience.”2Another term for a dynamic equivalence translation is a “thought-for-thought” translation, as explained in the “Introduction” to the New Living Translation (NLT): the translators say that “a dynamic-equivalence translation can also be called a thought-for-thought translation, as contrasted with a formal-equivalence or word-for-word translation.”3

A good illustration of the difference between essentially literal and dynamic equivalence translations is actually given in the “Introduction” to the NLT. They mention 1 Kings 2:10, which says, in the King James Version, “So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.”4Then they note that the NLT translates this verse, “Then David died and was buried in the city of David.”5The NLT translators see this as an advantage, for they say, “Only the New Living Translation clearly translates the real meaning of the Hebrew idiom ‘slept with his fathers’ into contemporary English.”6The argument in favor of the NLT would be that today, when John Doe dies, English speakers don’t say that John Doe “slept with his fathers.” Today, the way we would express the idea that someone died is simply to say that John Doe “died,” so that is what the NLT has done. The translation is a “thought-for-thought” translation because the main thought or idea—the idea that David died and was buried—is expressed in a way that modern speakers would use to express the same idea today.

However, that is not the end of the argument. Defenders of essentially literal translations object that some details are missing in the NLT’s thought-for-thought translation of 1 Kings 2:10. The dynamic equivalence translation does not include the idea of sleeping as a rich metaphor for death, a metaphor in which there is a veiled hint of someday awakening from that sleep to a new life. The expression “slept with his fathers” also includes a faint hint of a corporate relationship with David’s ancestors who had previously died, something that is also missing from the dynamic equivalence translation, “then David died.” Critics of the NLT would agree that the NLT translated the main idea into contemporary English, but they would add that it is better to translate all of the words of the Hebrew original, including the word shakab (which means, “to lie down, sleep”), and the words ’im (which means “with”), and ‘ab’ (which means “father,” and in the plural, “fathers”), since these words are in the Hebrew text as well. When these words are translated, not just the main idea but also more details of the meaning of the Hebrew original are brought over into English.

But will modern readers understand the literal translation, “David slept with his fathers”? Defenders of dynamic equivalence translations will say it is too difficult for readers to understand this since it is not an expression that English speakers use today. But defenders of essentially literal translations will reply that even modern readers who have never heard this idiom before will understand it because the rest of the sentence says that David was buried: “Then David slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David” (1 Kings 2:10, ESV). The larger context begins in verse 1, “When David’s time to die drew near . . .” (1 Kings 2:1). Modern readers may ponder the expression for a moment, but they will understand it, and they will then have access to the much greater richness of meaning that was there in the original text.

C. Translations Fall Along a Spectrum

Everyone involved in recent debates over Bible translations agrees that all Bible translations fall along a spectrum from those that are very literal to those that are very free or paraphrastic. This spectrum is represented on the following chart. (As the chart suggests, dynamic equivalence translations fall along a broader spectrum than essentially literal translations, because there is a wide variety in how much they are willing to paraphrase and to simplify to an easily understood idea in each verse or sentence.)

A SPECTRUM OF TRANSLATIONS

KJV

NRSV

NIV

GNB

NCV

CEV

MESSAGE

NKJV

HCSB

NIVI

REB

RSV

NET

TNIV

NLT

NASB

ESV

ESSENTIALLY

MIXED

DYNAMIC

VERY

LITERAL

EQUIVALENCE

PARAPHRASTIC

Abbreviations for Bible Versions (in order of publication; dates are given for the first publication of the entire Bible in each version; second dates indicate significant revisions):

KJV

King James Version (1611)

RSV

Revised Standard Version (1952, 1971)

NASB

New American Standard Version (New American Standard Bible) (1963, 1995)

The Living Bible (1971)

GNB

Good News Bible: The Bible in Today's English Version (1976, 1992)

NKJV

New King James Version (1982)

NIV

New International Version (1984)

NCV

New Century Version (1987, 1991)

REB

Revised English Bible (1989)

NRSV

New Revised Standard Version (1989)

CEV

Contemporary English Version (1995)

God's Word (1995)

MESSAGE

The Message (1995)

NIVI

New International Version Inclusive Language Edition (published in UK; 1995, 1996)

NLT

New Living Translation (1996)

NET

The NET Bible, New English Translation (1996)

ESV

English Standard Version (2001)

HCSB

Holman Christian Standard Bible (2004)

TNIV

Today's New International Version (2005)

This means that in actual practice every dynamic equivalence translation still has a lot of “word-for-word” renderings of individual words in the biblical text. And every essentially literal translation has some amount of “paraphrase” where a woodenly literal translation would be nearly incomprehensible to modern readers and would hinder communication rather than helping it. One common example is Philemon 7, which in the King James Version said:

For we have great joy and compassion in thy love, because the bow-els of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother (Philem. 7, KJV).

The Greek word translated “bowels” is splagchna, which refers to the inward parts of the body, especially the stomach and intestines, but when not used to refer literally to those parts of the body the Greek word referred metaphorically to the seat of inward emotions or to the emotions themselves, especially love, sympathy and mercy.7

So how should this word be translated today? The word “bowels” is not appropriate because it has come to be used in modern English almost exclusively to refer to the intestines and the discharge of bodily waste, a sense readers in 1611 would not have given it in a verse like this. Even translating it as “the intestines of the saints have been refreshed by you,” or “the internal organs of the saints have been refreshed by you,” would not help modern readers, because these highly literal renderings would seem more physiological or medicinal than emotional. For that reason nearly all modern translations (including some current printings of the KJV itself) have changed to “the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you” (ESV). This still talks about an internal organ (the heart) but does so in terms of an image that modern readers easily understand.8

But if all translations depart from complete literalness at some points, is there any difference between dynamic equivalence and essentially literal translations? Yes, there is. First, essentially literal translations will depart from complete literalness only where it is necessary, in cases where a truly literal translation would make it nearly impossible for readers to understand the meaning or would hinder communication of meaning much more than it would help it. But dynamic equivalence translations depart from literal translation and resort to paraphrase far more often, whenever the translators feel that the main thought or idea can be communicated more clearly with a more modern expression.

This reluctance to depart from literalness except where clearly necessary is reflected in the brief motto used by the translators of the 1952/1971 Revised Standard Version: “As literal as possible, as free as necessary.” That motto has been subsequently used by others producing essentially literal translations. The goal is to be as literal as they can be while still communicating the meaning clearly, and to vary from a literal to a more free translation (such as changing from “intestines” to “hearts”) only where it is necessary for accurate communication.

Second, another difference is that essentially literal translations will place a high emphasis on translating every word

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