"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
18 May 2005Scripture rescriptedI spent enough time in Catholic schools to become familiar with what was called the Douay Bible, and most of the verses I committed to memory were taken from versions thereof. (I took three years of high-school Latin, which threw me into the Vulgate, but that's another matter.) Still, the text I found most appealing was one from a different tradition entirely: the Authorized, aka King James, Version, which, to me at least, always stood out for its lyric quality, as though it were written to be performed in public. It is, of course, no coincidence that this was about the same time I was immersing myself in Shakespeare. A more recent text has emerged, called the English Standard Version, and it looks promising:
The ESV is an "essentially literal" translation that seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on "word-for-word" correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original.
Which latter, alas, wasn't the KJV's strong point. And this is the clincher:
Every translation is at many points a trade-off between literal precision and readability, between "formal equivalence" in expression and "functional equivalence" in communication, and the ESV is no exception. Within this framework we have sought to be "as literal as possible" while maintaining clarity of expression and literary excellence.
Susan B. posted the ESV Psalm 91, and, to these eyes anyway, it has all of the lyricism of the King James version, without the necessity of translation from Elizabethan English into something more contemporary, and with the sort of balance between spirit and letter I generally don't see in more "modern" (read: "less literal") renderings. The entire text is available online, but I'm thinking of ordering one of these for myself anyway. Posted at 6:28 AM to Immaterial WitnessTrackBack: 3:55 PM, 18 May 2005 » My New ESV Bible from LilacRose A while back, the folks at the ESV Blog had a free Bible giveaway for bloggers and I got on......[read more] This brings to mind Dante Gabrieli Rossetti's comment: “A translation is like a woman. If she is beautiful, she is not likely to be faithful.” Posted by: Dave Schuler at 11:18 AM on 18 May 2005Archaic verbiage and syntax carries a certain sense of poetry, at least to the modern ear, even without really trying. Then again, that may be the Shakespeare influence, where we expect to find archaic verbiage and syntax more poetical, thus it is. Posted by: McGehee at 12:04 PM on 18 May 2005Hi Charles, Thank you for the link. I agree, the ESV is very lyrical but yet still very readable. While the KJV has very beautiful and poetic language, it's just not practical for everyday reading and study. Or at least it isn't for me. BTW, I'm sorry your ping to my post didn't go through. Apparently, the Spamlookup plugin is being overzealous and it blocked your ping. This is the first time a legitimate trackback has been blocked since I installed the plugin. I'm not sure what to do to prevent this from happening again, since there's no way that I can find to exempt an IP from the filtering. Anyway, my apologies. |