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We were creating an entirely new translation-not a paraphrase-that retained the strengths of the TLB and minimized the weaknesses of the TLB. We wanted them to maintain the dynamic-equivalence philosophy of translation.Īs the project moved forward, we realized that we were doing far more than revising The Living Bible. Most significantly, we challenged them to maintain the easy readability of The Living Bible. (I served as Chief Stylist and a member of the central Bible Translation Committee.) Tyndale’s challenge to that group was to revise The Living Bible wherever the meaning could be made more accurate in relation to the original texts. In the late 1980s, Tyndale House pulled together a team of 90 Greek and Hebrew scholars and English stylists. So the stage was set for the NIV to chart a course midway between the KJV and the TLB. The King James was formal and hard to read The Living Bible was folksy and easy to read, but it was created by one man rather than by a team of translators. In particular, I think The Living Bible paved the way for the New International Version (NIV) to become so popular when it was published in 1978. As Billy Graham often said, “It reads like today’s newspaper.” Tyndale House ( sold more than 40 million copies of the TLB, and I like to think that it paved the way for the explosion of new translations that have been published since then. So the TLB represented a whole new way to read and understand the Bible. Most Protestants were still using the King James Version (KJV), which was challenging to read. The TLB was phenomenally popular in the 1970s. The NLT grew out of The Living Bible (TLB), which my father paraphrased and published in 1971. The Mission and Impact of the New Living Translation (NLT) The best-known translation in this category is the New Living Translation. Here the translator is less concerned about the individual Greek or Hebrew words and more concerned about the overall meaning of the text. All too often, readers react by saying, “Just like I thought-I can’t understand the Bible.” The Dynamic-Equivalence Philosophy of TranslationĪnother philosophy is to focus first on the meaning of the original text, then to replicate that meaning as naturally as possible in the receptor language. This can be valuable for study purposes, but the end result is often a stilted style of English. Some Bible translators attempt to maintain a word-for-word correspondence between the original Hebrew or Greek words and the English translation. The Formal-Equivalence Philosophy of Translation
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This is admittedly simplistic, but in general there are two main philosophies of translation: formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. Whether the translation is the work of one individual or a team of scholars and linguists, each translation has been guided by the translation philosophy of the translators.
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We are so accustomed to the various English translations of the Bible that we sometimes forget that our favorite English text is not the original. But it’s helpful to remind ourselves that all of these translations are indeed translations from the original texts. The Bible has been translated into several thousand languages around the world. But what exactly is the Bible? Is the King James Version the Bible? Is the New International Version the Bible? Is the New Living Translation the Bible? Is the Chinese Union Version the Bible? Is the Reina-Valera the Bible? The answer is YES. Most Christians view the Bible as a holy book-the Word of God. Taylor, Chairman and CEO, Tyndale House Publishers