Fellow blogger Dr. Joel Hoffman has announced his newest book, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, which deals with some of the tricky aspects of Bible translation and the way that English translations often obscure the meaning of the ancient texts in their original context. Joel is an excellent writer; this [...] Read more »
Children’s Bible Translations: Thoughts
Joel Hoffman has just posted on the subject of Bible translations for children, spurred by Ellen Frankel’s post on “Making the Bible PG.” Hoffman brings up some good points about children speaking a different dialect than their parents and lacking the conceptual base to understand certain language or actions: a “barren woman” is one example [...] Read more »
Liberals Aren’t the Only Ones Who Tweak the Text
The Huffington Post is reporting (via Beliefnet and other sources) an astonishingly brazen project put forth by conservapedia.com (which itself could leave someone speechless): the “Conservative Bible Project.” This project undertakes to eliminate “liberal bias” from the Bible, since the proponent(s) of this project suggest that modern Bible translations are dominated by just such liberalism. [...] Read more »
“Blank Slates” and Poor English Equal Bad Translation
Joel Hoffman has just observed that he thinks many people prefer the “blank slate” that comes from incoherent translation because it allows them to see whatever they choose in the passage. That is, they can get whatever “feel” they want from it, without having things like the actual meaning getting in their way. I’ve been [...] Read more »
Translation: “Meaning” is more than just the “message”
Joel Hoffman has asked some good questions over at “God Didn’t Say That,” dealing mainly with the goals of translation: Read more »