> Clearly, ALL Bible translators are going to have to make some

> decisions

> about how to put this verse together to make any sense. And every

> verse

> besides. That is why it is good to compare a variety of translations,

> for all will have their strengths and weaknesses.

It’s even more complex than simply rearranging the words and adding conjunctions where appropriate.

Take a couple of fr’instances:

When Luke describes the angel’s visitation to Mary he actually announces, using the usual greek phrase, that Mary is going to “get one in the belly”. Not even the KJV transalates that word for word, because the translation to English, even Elizabethan English, is just too controversial.

That’s an example of when social convention rules out a translation, but there are times when the translator’s choice is even more difficult.

I know one of a team of Wycliffe translators who were rendering the bible in the language of one of the south sea islands. They got to the bit about our sins being washed “whiter than snow” and realised that the people who would be reading the translation had never seen snow. Thinking of the whitest thing their audience had any experience with they chose to render the phrase “whiter than cockatoo feathers”.

– Regards,

Richard Kerr

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