What Makes a Translation Accurate? Tremper Longman III
Posted in Translation Philosophy by Tremper Longman III on October 28th, 2010Question: What makes a translation accurate?
A translation is accurate if it is able to communicate the thought of the original into another language. Languages do not line up with one another in a word-for-word manner, so word-for-word translations are not as accurate as thought-for-thought translations. Of course, this means that the translator will have to make exegetical judgments about the meaning of a passage, but this is of the nature of all translation. Translations are commentaries without the notes (this is true of all translations, whether they are formal equivalent [word for word] or functional equivalent (thought for thought). Some people wrongly think that thought-for-thought translations are paraphrases. No translation is perfectly accurate, but the most commonly used translations all have a high level of accuracy (NIV; TNIV; NLT; ESV; NRSV; NLT; NKJV), though I personally would have places in all these versions where I would question whether they got it just right. That’s why it is important for those who do not know Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to use multiple translations and commentaries when they do serious work on a biblical text, and why it is important for ministers of the Word to learn the original languages.
Tremper Longman is the Robert H. Gundry professor of biblical studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He has been active in the area of Bible translation by serving on the central committee that produced and now monitors the New Living Translation.
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