The method or theory of bible translation is an important and, at times, a complicated issue. It is something pastors need to consider. I have made clear elsewhere that I favor a more literal translation, rather than a dynamic equivalence approach. I don’t think dynamic equivalence translations are evil, but I think there is much to be gained in as literal a translation as possible.<\/p>\n
Two recent essays have discussed this issue in significant detail, saying better than I could things I have wanted to say. So, I will point you to them.<\/p>\n
The first essay<\/a> is from Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton (I have previously commended his book on C. S. Lewis<\/a>). This is a fairly lengthy post but a very valuable one. The issue in translation often hinges on what English today does or should sound\/look like, so this analysis from a prominent English professor is significant. After referring to “an assertively egalitarian, democratizing, and anti-elitist culture like our own today,”\u009d Jacobs begins to describe how such a culture shapes approaches to translation.<\/p>\n Only in such a culture would something like “dynamic equivalence”\u009d models of translation be developed, because dynamic equivalence – which encourages translators to ask how we<\/em> in our time and place might say whatever the Bible is taken to say – allows one to deal with difficult passages in the original text not by translating them but by interpreting their obscurities out of existence. Such passages must be cleared away, whenever possible, in order to make the crooked places straight and the rough places plain. The simple and problem-free translation then offers itself as evidence of the simplicity and problem-freeness of the biblical text itself. The translators thus stand to their readers in loco parentis<\/em>: The “little children”\u009d never have to know what struggles their scholarly fathers undertook in order to protect them from the agonies of interpretive confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I encourage you to read the whole of Jacobs’ essay<\/a>.<\/p>\n