ONE BIBLE, MANY VERSIONS
Are all translations created equal?
By Dave Brunn
IVP. 208 pages. £11.99
ISBN 978 1 844 746 262
In this book, Dave Brunn, a Bible translator with many years’ experience in tribal languages in Papua New Guinea, turns the spotlight on Bible translations in the English language.
Specifically he examines two versions which claim to be ‘essentially’ or ‘strictly’ literal, the English Standard Version (ESV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB), to see how literal they really are. In the first chapters he gives ample evidence that the ESV and NASB translators have frequently used a less literal ‘meaning-based’ manner, without which they would not communicate clearly in English. He suggests that these versions would be better dubbed ‘modified literal’ translations. The only criticism I’d give is that he doesn’t take sufficient notice of the footnotes in the ESV and NASB which in most cases give the more literal rendering. However, footnotes are often ignored and his argument stands nonetheless.