Christianity Commons^™

Modern English Bible Translations, Gaye Strathearn

Faculty Publications

The work of translation from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties—philological, contextual, and even procedural difficulties. If a word has numerous meanings, as most do, how does the translator decide which one to use? Should the translation reflect a wordfor- word translation (i.e., formal equivalence), or should it reflect the idiomatic language of the receptor language (i.e., functional/dynamic equivalence)? The major benefit of a formal-equivalence approach is that the translation maintains a feel for the language and format of the original text. The construction of Hebrew and Greek words and sentences is maintained, as much as possible, …