Talk:Bible translations into English

message: Would it be feasible to have a quick-and-dirty table (or other form of concise representation) that shows the dependency of all those translations? I came here to quickly check which early English translations (Tyndale?  Wyclif?) were based on the Vulgate and which weren't. Which use a Hebrew original? Which use the Septuagint original? Do the folks behind the Geneva Bible have access to Luther's translation? Etc., etc. I may be naive, but it seems as if such information is pretty well defined and could be presented as a table. (In any case, I found these otherwise wonderful pages lacking in giving me precisely the information I was looking for.)  Arbor 13:03, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is by no means that simple. Shortly, people use the best material they have and as many sources as possible. For instance the New Revised Standard Version is a revision of the Revised Standard Version which "revised" the King James Version which was largely based on Tyndale's Version which was translated from the Vulgate and Luther's version or maybe only refered to them while using Hebrew and Greek sources available at that time. Rmhermen 16:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Specifically to answer "Do the folks behind the Geneva Bible have access to Luther's translation?", is certainly yes, how much it inluenced them is another question. Our article notes that it was translated from "Greek New Testament and Hebrew scriptures that comprise the Christian Old Testament."; however, "The English rendering was substantially based on the earlier translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale." Rmhermen 16:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks. As you point out, all the information is there somewhere, including my other questions. Maybe what I really would want is a Source texts subsection of the current page that gives a brief overview, pretty much like what you started explaining in the above two paragraphs. My original idea of a tabular presentation is clearly silly. Arbor 17:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are lots of ways to categorize scriptures. The lack of database features in Wikipedia make it hard to organize things like the "source texts" that you mention. Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bible#Help develop Scripture Database website for a proposed improvement. --J. J. 19:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Overview of sources

message: "These centuries added to the (unfounded) conviction of many that the Bible ought not to become too common, that it should not be read by everybody, that it required a certain amount of learning to make it safe reading."
This claim of an "(unfounded) conviction" can be refuted with the fact that protestant church groups are over 30,000 in number at this time of writing. [Cpt|Kirk 12:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with claim made in "Old English translations" section 

message: The link from "History of the English Bible" is confusing.Silver Surfer 10:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is only a small part of the history of the English bible 

message: "While the illiterate majority of the people had little desire for access to the Bible, the educated minority would have been averse to so great and revolutionary a change."
I'm certainly not comfortable with this proclamation about "the people" having had "little desire for access to the Bible."
I can understand their maybe having little need but, as I understand Western history, perhaps the primary reason for the spread of literacy itself was the desire for access to the Bible.  Maybe a bit of acadmeic bias implied in this statement?--Economy1  —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Educated Minorities and The People 

message: The article doesn't clearly cite the sources. I read the 1911 encyclopedia entry near the bottom of the page, and there are statements made in this article that do not appear to be in the original material. Also, the book cited at the bottom of the article, in the references section, is not linked to any specific material within the article, so I can not be sure what specific text the reference is referring to.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Godfollower4ever (talk • contribs) 04:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article citations.. 

message: "but do not state which textform is indicated in the footnotes or the base text". What does that mean? The NIV at least indicates which manuscript is the source of the main and variant translations. DJ Clayworth (talk) 21:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Random NIV example: Colossians 3:4 "When Christ, who is your life" the footnote says "Some manuscripts our".  "Some manuscripts" doesn't specify what kind of textform those manuscripts may fall in.  The New King James Bible will say that this "our" is TR (Textus Receptus) and "you" is NU (Nestle-Aland/UBS).  I think that because the NKJ was going back to the Textus Receptus they felt more pressure to say what reading was coming from where.  That's just speculation, but the notes certainly do give more information than the NIV or NRS that just have "some manuscripts" or "other ancient authorities."  Granted, it's a mixed bag, since even the NIV and NRS will make some notes of the DSS or LXX in the Old Testament.EGMichaels (talk) 21:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

text: The NIV does often say which source text is which, though it doesn't always. The phrase we use "limited footnotes" would seem to cover the case.  DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnotes

message: From the article, in the section on Early Modern English translations, specifically talking about Tyndale's translation:
"Greek and Hebrew are slightly closer to English than Latin, and thus, Tyndale’s translation is one of the more accessible versions in its English phrasing."
I find that very difficult to believe.  Latin has had a much bigger effect on modern English than Greek, and Hebrew very little direct effect.  I would like to see a citation for this at the very least.  I left it in, but I would very much like to see some evidence for this outlandish claim.
98.109.133.51 (talk) 01:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "Greek and Hebrew are closer to English than Latin" paraphrases something that Tyndale wrote: "For the Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin." (Tyndale, Obedience of a Christian Man, fol. xv, as quoted in David Norton, The King James Bible, A Short History ..., p. 13). This is a polemic for Tyndale's life work of translation, but also reflects the state of the Latin and English languages of the time. In Tyndale's day, Latin had not yet influenced English sentence structure; Bible translation and the proliferation of nonfiction books were to change English in the next 75 years. The Greek of the Bible was probably more colloquial than scholarly, and if Tyndale's acquaintance with Greek was mainly in the Bible, I can see where he was coming from. Note that Biblical Hebrew, like English, had lost case endings on nouns and adjectives, making word order more important; Hebrew also favors short sentences. Tyndale simply translated the Hebrew phrases into simple English, giving rise to the many Hebraisms in modern idiom; Tyndale may have been the single most influential stylist in the English language [personal opinion, but Daniell and Norton probably have something to say]. In any case, this discussion belongs in the article on Tyndale's Bible. Eall Ân Ûle (talk) 04:57, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this true? 

message: This article's description of only two types of translation seems to conflict with  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations#Modern_translation_efforts which clearly distinguishes "dynamic equivalence" as different from "paraphrase."  This article here equates those two, implying that only two methods of translation exist: 1) literal, word for word, and 2) paraphrase. This is disingenuous at the very least. The discussion on the linked Bible translations page is much more in-depth and better written.
DocOctopus (talk) 20:15, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The page actually says: "considered to be somewhere on a scale between the two extremes". Of course the article on the general subject of Bible translation will dwell more on the details, as it should. This is only discussing English language translations, a separate subject, not an attempt to duplicate that page. Rmhermen (talk) 00:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflicts with another wikipedia article 

message: I was caught up short reading this paragraph. Two sentences begin with the work "It", which has no obvious antecedent. At first I thought "It" referred to the books that Tyndale printed, but this obviously does not fit the context. This should be an easy fix.
Much worse is the disinformation in the last sentence, "In this version the 14 books of the Apochrypha [sic] are returned to the Bible in the order written rather than kept separate in an appendix." (my emphasis} Nobody knows enough about the dates of the books of the Bible to line them up in the order written. There is not even a standard order; Medieval manuscripts differ, and each of the major religious traditions has its own "logic" for arranging the books in the modern printed copies (and its own choice of books). How about "in their usual places according to the Latin Vulgate, rather than being in an appendix, as in all Protestant Bibles". (Actually, I'm not sure about the last five words -- is this true of Protestant Bibles in other European languages?) Eall Ân Ûle (talk) 05:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early Modern English paragraph. 

message: This is undoubtedly a sticky subject and one that, in practice, is likely more difficult to handle than in theory.  The recent attempts in the main article to neutralize discussion of the Jehovah's Witnesses translation of the Bible (which renders Elohim, Yahweh, etc. as Jehovah, and also translates the New Testament to deny the divinity of Christ), as well as the advent of intentional mistranslations such as the Queen James, make me wonder what place such translations have in this article, or in related articles on the Bible.  Adding to the complexity is the fact that opinion on whether a version is intentionally mistranslated, biased versus the original text, etc. usually is not unanimous and is subject to perspective.  But we may be able to make a distinction on the basis of the group(s) involved in developing the translation...for example, I would argue that translations produced with critical scholarship, or groups with no strong political/social leanings, or groups represented by several mainstream denominations, should not be classified in this group.  Jtrevor99 (talk) 20:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: You are opening a can of worms. However, it may be possible to identify translations whose introductions identify specific topical goals in their translation. Other than that, I think you are on shaky ground.Pete unseth (talk) 12:03, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I absolutely agree that it's a can of worms, and there is no clear, universal, delineation.  But it is one that needs to be addressed, nevertheless.  Identifying the topical goals, along with the group(s) responsible for the translation, might be helpful.  It might also be helpful to identify passage(s) that might have been subjected to deliberate mistranslation.  My only concern is that I do not think attempts at accurate translations - whether they succeeded or not in a given person's opinion - ought to have equal footing with translations that deliberately change the text.  Jtrevor99 (talk) 15:32, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intentional mistranslations, biased translations, politically/religiously motivated translations, etc. 

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