Why the REB is a great translation

Let me count the ways. ElShaddai Edwards begins a series of posts in defense of REB here. The number of times REB retains the "intensity of image" of the source text is definitely an asset. The post convinced me that I need to purchase a copy of NEB. For a thorough online review of REB by Rick Mansfield, a most accomplished connoisseur of English translations of the Bible, go here. For a spoof on those of us who read the REB with pleasure, see David Ker here.

Comments

[Nathan Stitt]

I have a copy of both NEB and REB, and many times I prefer the NEB choices. It is very refreshing to read, though the REB seems to inspire more confidence in it's renderings. I also prefer the layout of my NEB as it is single column with the verses off to the side, which is very conducive to reading.

[JohnFH]

Nathan,

Another NEB/REB fan! I would encourage you to consult NJPSV as well for the Hebrew Bible.

[Esteban Vázquez]

All hail the NEB/REB! Down with the Irreverend Mr Ker and his minions!

I brought with me one Bible, and one Bible only, from nearly a hundred I had in Puerto Rico: The REB Oxford Study Bible. It is the stuff of my dreams.

[David Ker]

I've repented and extended an olive branch. Shall we make peace?

[Nathan Stitt]

I use the JPS for the OT, and recently used it last month to teach a high school class about Esther. You can imagine the conversations we had about the way that Jews celebrate that feast. It's a great study Bible and a refreshingly different perspective of the OT.

[JohnFH]

David,

Your conversion is faux. Esteban in a comment to your post tried to knock some sense into you, but I'm not sure he succeeded.

Still, I'm with you all the way that currently, few people know how to read the Bible - or anything else - and bring it alive. In a former parish, an English professor, when she read KJV from the lectern made it sing and made it dance better than most people are capable of doing if they read the same passage in the Message.

In short, I think the issue is far more basic than translation type. It has to do with competence in reading.

Where to put the emphasis. Where to pause. How to pucker one's lips around words. Sweet readings are made of these.

I remain aghast that you prefer a translation style whose declared goal is to disambiguate the source text such that it becomes saleable as fast food. Pop it in the microwave, press a button, and it's done. Santa is waving his finger indeed. You really must buy it - the price is right. Prove your love to your family.

Every poet knows that language is appropriate to a "God who hides himself" (Isa 45:15), not a God who takes his clothes off and says, "Look at me." Every poet is in the slow food business. Presentation counts.

That's one issue. DE translators assume that the original authors always and everywhere wrote in perfectly revealing, pornographic prose.

Sometimes the source text has that kind of clarity, don't get me wrong. But DE translation technique assumes it always does, and therefore does the inappropriate thing of taking a modest, well-clothed text and making it as revealing as a Playboy centerfold, with that redundant sort of background glow that is always and very comfortingly the same.

I learned all I need to know about interpretation from my 5 year old Anna. She often invites me to play with her Barbie dolls. (Male) idiot that I am, I thought at first it was about undressing Barbie. No, she explained by her actions. It's about dressing her, from head to foot. Undressing serves one purpose only: to make it possible to dress her up all over again.

This is just another way of saying that when DE translators reduce the richness of the vocabulary, syntax, and rhetoric of the source text, when they stuff the whole into the one pragmatic goal I will refer to as pornographic clarity, they haven't taken my daughter Anna's lesson to heart.

It's as if they think it's about undressing Barbie. It's not. It's about dressing her.

I remain aghast that, since in your language and culture, football in the American sense does not exist, whenever you come across the word "punt" used literally or metaphorically, you translate it with "kick" and then pat yourself on the back in self-satisfaction.

DE translators do that kind of thing rather often. They think they are kicking a field goal. They don't realize they are actually punting.

That's my way of saying that DE translations fall short when they do not achieve "ouch-level" accuracy.

I don't care how literary CEV is, in its own way. If it achieves that by taking a dull pair of scissors to the source text and omitting what it can't express in its register of choice, I'm not interested.

Esteban and Nathan,

Now that you have put your hand to the plough, don't ever look back. Let your NEB / REB and NJPSV be like Danielson's parallel prose version of Milton's Paradise Lost. Let these challenging translations call your attention back to the argument, structure, and fine details of that which they translate.

Yes, that means learning Hebrew and Greek at least at the same level as your reading knowledge of Miltonic English.

[David Ker]

John, you're a poet yourself. Cast off the ancient straight-jackets that are binding you and run naked through the fields of language. Stop beating the bongo with the bones of Milton and Jeremiah. Join the rest of us as we dance to a different tune.

[Nathan Stitt]

Well I've taken some baby steps towards Greek. Hebrew is something I have on the back shelf for a future date.

[JohnFH]

David,

You are a flower child, but you seem to be happily married, so I assume someone else is the rock in your family.

Nathan,

Follow the yellow brick road. Soon you won't be in Kansas anymore.

[ZRM]

The REB has become my favorite translation. It's difficult to think that REB and the boring NLT-types use a similar translation philosophy.