Since I’ve been making moderately negative comments about The Voice here on this blog, I’m going to link to a more favorable short review at Englewood Review of Books. Here’s the conclusion: In some of the introductory material, the editors (led by Chris Seay) note that “Too often, the passion, grit, humor and beauty have…
I know I’m beating this topic to death, but I can’t help it. Really I can’t. Or at least I won’t. I was reading Hebrews today, and I ran into some interesting examples, both of positive and (in my opinion) negative uses of italics. Before I look at a couple of cases, however, I do…
I’ve been including The Voice Bible in my lectionary reading for the last couple of weeks. My early impression was that it was fairly good as a paraphrase, though the italics, while fairly consistent, were a bit distracting. I thought they were unnecessary. I was wrong. I have yet to do any sort of objective…
Yesterday I complained a bit about the explanation that The Voice provides to readers, informing them that since Bathsheba had just completed purification after her period, Uriah couldn’t be the father of the child. Today I was reading the same passage in the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), and there we get the opposite. In…
Last week I mentioned that while I found the italics in The Voice more logical than I usually do in the formal equivalent translations that use the device (e.g. KJV, NKJV, NASB), I still found them annoying in the text. One goal of a dynamic equivalence translation is generally readability, and for me the italics…
I’ve always regarded the use of italics to indicate words that “aren’t in the Greek” one of the sillier notions in translating. Considering there are no English words in the Greek text, one could put everything in italics. On the other hand, if an English word isn’t in some way justified by the Greek (or…
I’m linking to this post by Joel Hoffman not just for its content, which is indeed excellent, but also because I think it shows how to discuss translating a word from one language to another. A couple of notes: 1) He’s discussing how to translate the word in a specific instance, not some general “what…
Well, not really so amazing. I’ve seen many like it, and it comes from the Worldview Weekend folks who have been spending their time being extraordinarily critical of other conservative Christian organizations. The article is titled BRIEF (AND BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTIVE) SUMMARY OF PASSAGES CONTAINED WITHIN “THE MESSAGE” BY EUGENE PETERSON WHICH DIRECTLY COMPROMISE…
There’s a new translation blog, and I’ve added it to my RSS reader. Check out BLT.
First, two warnings. I’m not going to go into detail on the numerous translation difficulties in Psalm 22 and this post results from a book currently in the final stages of release from my company, Energion Publications. So if you want to avoid the potential commercial side, skip this one. On the other hand, that’s…
