As we discuss Bible translation, we really ought to stop a minute and pay our respects to the concept of “dynamic equivalence.” The concept of dynamic equivalence was developed by linguist Eugene Nida. It describes the attempt to translate (specifically the Bible) via “thought by thought” rather than “word by word” translation.
While Nida gave name to the concept and was largely responsible for popularizing it, dynamic equivalence did not begin with Nida. Translations as old as the Septuagint (translation of the Old Testament into Greek that was done before the time of Christ) made use of this very practice. Nida made the use of dynamic equivalence intentional, with the goal of better expressing the thoughts behind the text and not just the words themselves.
An alternative to dynamic equivalence is formal equivalence, which seeks to maintain, where possible, the original word order, verb tenses, idiomatic expressions, etc. Beyond formal equivalence is a literal translation, which holds strictly to word by word translation.
Versions like the New American Standard Bible are translated using formal equivalence. The Today’s English Bible (also known as the Good News Bible) is the best example of dynamic equivalence, especially because of the large role Nida and his theory played in the translation. Most translations fall in between these two extremes. Even stricter than the NASB would be versions like Young’s Literal Translation; among versions that are freer than the TEV we find paraphrases like The Message and The Living Bible.
We’ll continue talking about Bible translation this week; feel free to share your ideas on any of these theories or any others that you know of.
The Message is not a paraphrase — at least not as I understand paraphrases.
My understanding of a paraphrase is a translation of a translation. For example, I believe The Living Bible came into existence when Kenneth Taylor sat down with the 1901 ASV and modernized its language to aid the theologically and linguistically untrained reader.
By way of contrast, The Message came into existence as Eugene Peterson translated Galatians from the Greek for his congregation in Maryland. He did more and more of this translating, eventually stepping down from his pastoring work to complete it. He writes, “While I was teaching a class on Galatians, I began to realize that the adults in my class weren’t feeling the vitality and directness that I sensed as I read and studied the New Testament in its original Greek. Writing straight from the original text, I began to attempt to bring into English the rhythms and idioms of the original language. I knew that the early readers of the New Testament were captured and engaged by these writings and I wanted my congregation to be impacted in the same way. I hoped to bring the New Testament to life for two different types of people: those who hadn’t read the Bible because it seemed too distant and irrelevant and those who had read the Bible so much that it had become ‘old hat.'”
While the Message is a one-man work, it is no more a paraphrase than the NLT. Peterson explains more of the process in Eat This Book
Boy, I’m rusty on commenting after a week in Colonial Williamsburg!
Tim, I am recently rediscovering THE MESSAGE and loving it! I read some material in Romans yesterday that was as if I had read it for the first time. I looked at other translations, and THE MESSAGE kept the spirit of the thought–but really made it speak to me. Same thing for a lesson I taught on Sarai/Sarah: among other things, I noticed for the first time just HOW HARD Abraham was laughing when God told him he was going to have a child with Sarah (“Recovering, Abraham…”)!
For what it’s worth…
enjoying the series, I love languages and love the Word and wish that more Christians would open their eyes and at least try to understand translation a little instead of being so..so…”whatever”
Great post Sir! Thank you for your research and sharing it. I have found at “all’ versions have their place and as a student of the Bible, I try to look through as many of them as I can. It broadens my research and knowledge of the text as I dig more and more.
Thanks!…….Trent
Nick — That’s probably more precise. What I should have pointed out is that one-man translations belong in a class by themselves (how appropriate that I used a hyphen to talk about The Message… I often call it “The Hyphenated Bible”)
Karen — Yeah, I remember Lynn Anderson pointing out years ago that Abraham fell on his face laughing at God. We always remember S., but forget that Abe laughed first
Brian and Trent — Thanks for the encouragement
I would have to say the message is quite a bit more a paraphrase than the NLT (1996). It is far more dynamic than it is equivalent. Don’t get me wrong. It is a great work and has much merit. I do appreciate the fact that Peterson did work from the Hebrew and Greek which gives his work hints of being a translation and some would say it is a translation outright. But the NLT was translated by committee with less emphasis on being a paraphrase of the meaning of the text. I would think the NLT translation committee probably looked a lot more closely at things like textual variants as well than one man would be able to do on his own “translating” the whole Bible. So my take on what Peterson did is that he translated it and then put it in his own words (paraphrased). The funny thing is, that is basically what all translations do. Peterson just didn’t do it as rigorously as many other translations do. I hope I don’t sound like I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth at the same time here.
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