Over at the “gold standard” blog for
discussion of the Bible in English, David
Ker asks what people want to hear discussed when it comes to Bible
translation. I am not surprised by the majority of the responses, which I would
rephrase in this way:
You must remember this: A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The
fundamental things apply: As time goes by.
In straight-up, propositional language: the Bible
in English debate continues to center on the relative merits and demerits of
translations that are as “literal as possible and as free as necessary” on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, translations that choose natural,
field-tested English over traditional and more literal alternatives apart from
a short list of apparently unavoidable Biblicisms such as “baptize” and “Christ.”
The latter is, as every field-tester knows, Jesus’ last name.
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