5.5. This post is dedicated to all the men who have endured a pregnant woman’s nesting phase. It hits with little or no provocation or warning. When it comes, it comes. On a related note, there is not a speck of dust in our entire house, so feel free to come over and eat off our floors.
5. The Society of Biblical Literature has recently announced the publication of the SBL Greek New Testament. This critical edition of the Greek New Testament was edited by Michael W Holmes and differs from the standard NA/UBS text (for those interested, I generally use the UBS, mainly because I hate the font in the Nestle-Aland edition) in more than 540 places. If you are a Logos Bible Software user, you can get a free download. You can go here to see other free download opportunities.
4. Okay, let’s get to business. The NIV 2011 has been officially released; with a copyright date of 2010. Love it. If you go to biblegateway.com and use the NIV, you will be using the updated edition. The word on the street is that the physical copy will be released in March 2011. I appreciated the Translators’ Notes (pdf, drafted by Craig Blomberg) which helps explain some of the Committee’s decisions. It was well written and is a helpful look at the ins-and-outs of Bible translation. You can also view quick comments from Doug Moo, who chaired the Committee.
3. The most interesting aspect of the NIV 2011 (in my opinion) is the partnership with Collins Bank of English, who have tracked trends in the English language for quite sometime. If you read the Translators’ Notes given above, you’ll see how this helped the Committee through the process. This aids in avoiding purely personal and anecdotal evidence in changes in the English language, which is especially crucial considering the Committee is largely made up of middle-aged (or older), highly educated people- not exactly a representation of the English speaking world. This was an ingenious idea, and I’m glad the Committee went this route.
2. The Gospel Coalition and Bible Gateway are teaming up to offer a translation forum called Perspectives in Translation. The format is this: there is a question issued (e.g., how should Romans 1:17 be translated?) and various scholars offer their opinions in a concise format. Love the idea, not sure I love the implementation. Let me lay it out for you:
- First, there isn’t a main page that has links to the various questions and answers. The outcome is that it’s a pain in the rear to find things. There ought to be a page with each question (such as the one above) and links to the answers given. That would seem to be an obvious approach, so I’m not sure who fell asleep on that one. To be frank, it’s a mess.
- Second, there isn’t a ton of interaction between the contributors. I was looking forward to scholars debating (in a friendly way, of course) some of these issues.
- Third, there are Bible scholars contributing, but no linguists. One of the common mistakes lay people make is assuming that someone who knows Greek or Hebrew is qualified to translate. But understanding how languages work is a pretty crucial aspect of translating any document into any language. But, maybe I’m not giving these particular scholars enough credit.
Lest anyone think I’m completely down on this forum, I’ll say that I do love the idea and think it can improve. I did enjoy Moo’s post on Romans 1:17 (and I agree, I doubt the average person would know what “from faith to faith” would mean).
1. For those interested in comparing the NIV 2011 (©2010) to the TNIV and the NIV 1984, you are in luck. You can view them side-by-side-by-side at Bible Gateway. But big kudos need to go to Robert Slowley, who has spent a ridiculous amount of time working on some comparions. If you want a basic look at comparing the three versions in the NIV family, check out this link. Another interesting comparison page provided by Robert: the 250 most changed verses. If you want to see more, check out this roundup of links from Mark Stevens, as well as John Dyer’s page of comparisons. These help explain an apparent discrepancy. The Committee claimed that they kept about 95% of the original NIV, yet some of the numbers being quoted are more like 60%. The Committe kept 95% of the same words, but 60% of the verses went unchanged. I say that just in case anyone is confused, it was on John’s page that I realize where these numbers were coming from. Thanks to Robert Slowley and John Dyer for putting the time in to track these changes, and thanks to Mark Stevens for bringing various links together in one helpful post.
I agree with you that it was a brilliant move to team up with Collins Bank of English. After the TNIV debacle they had to come up with substantiated grounds for their translation decisions. They’ll save themselves at least some grief, though there are those who still will disagree on the gender language – but I think that the disagreement is deeper – that only literal translations are acceptable.
One thing I’ve come to realize is that we need to cut translators some slack. Over the past couple of years my wife and I have from time to time translated artwork title from Korean to English for my sister-in-law’s friend. It’s so incredibly difficult to preserve meaning especially translating idioms and trying to preserve the elegance and economy of words that’s necessary in the title of artwork. Sometimes it takes us 20 minutes to translate a 5 word title (as an aside doing that has shown me how bogus the claim that ‘literal translations are necessarily more accurate’ is – a view I used to hold). I can’t imagine working on a project like translating the Psalms. How do you preserve both semantic meaning and the force that’s communicated through it being poetry? I’m glad I’m not having to translate for others to read. :)
Have you had a chance to look at the SBLGNT yet? I’m wondering how different it is. I often wonder the same thing about the UBS (TEDS uses the NA). I assume the text is pretty similar, so it’s more of a difference in layout?
“I’ve come to realize is that we need to cut translators some slack”- 100% agree.
I haven’t really looked at the SBLGNT yet. Not sure when I’ll get the chance. The NA27 and UBS4 have the same Greek text, just different critical apparatus (the UBS has far fewer textual variants presented). At Gordon-Conwell we were instructed to use the NA27 (because of the critical apparatus), so I did for class purposes. But I carry my UBS because I get lost trying to read the NA font. It’s as simple as that. Maybe it’s just me.
My computer generated comparison of the NIV2011 with the TNIV and NIV1984 has had many major updates:
http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/
1. Greek text – now includes the SBLGNT with apparatus
2. Hebrew text – HBS text included (experimental)
3. Most changed verses list compared with both TNIV and NIV1984:
http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/most_changed_verses_tniv.html
http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/most_changed_verses_niv1984.html
4. List of (possible) proper noun changes:
http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/proper_noun_changes.html
5. List of word changes relevant to the gender language debate:
http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/cbmw_words.html
6. List of all words in text (warning: page is very large)
http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/all_words.html
Plus many many bug fixes, improvements in presentation, and other minor fixes.
-RobHu
Thanks, Robert, for all the time you’ve put into this. Great work!
I have no idea what “from faith to faith” is supposed to mean. It certainly doesn’t convey what Rom 1:17 says, because what Rom 1:17 actually means something.
On the Collins Bank issue, I also agree fully. In fact, now they can have an objective measure by which to claim that they are merely translating the Bible into English as it is objectively used today, rather than giving into a preordained ideological agenda. Being able to point to objective measures of actual English use shows that what they’re doing is translating into English as an existing language rather than ideologically mounting an effort to influence the language.
Of course, it helps (against such a charge) that they outright violate the ideological agenda that insists on removing all language that might be judged sexist and back off TNIV moves in that direction, while also violating the ideological agenda that resists using plural-form pronouns to refer to singular referents or resists using “brothers and sisters” to refer to gender-mixed groups with “adelphoi”. Instead, they look at how language is used and can claim not to be motivated by such ideologies.
RE: translators notes.
http://www.bible.org then select net bible.
It’s a free download. it has over 64K translator’s notes. That’s where tniv got their idea from. But they all should, so big deal. The “master of New Testament” translators is recognized world wide as an expert. … blah blah blah…
it’s made for ministry work world wide, with enough notes Gideon’s translators use it to help them translate.
Enjoy.
bd