Translating the biblical texts into English (or any other language) is not as simple as it may sound. For starters, the translator has to determine which philosophy of translation to follow. The two basic options are formal equivalence (also called word-for-word, literal, or essentially literal) and dynamic equivalence (also called thought-for-thought). And there is also [...]

We find the story of the widow’s mite in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. In both passages (which are nearly identical), Jesus makes the point that the widow’s gift to the Temple treasury was very costly to her, because it represented everything she had. But the challenge for the translator is to determine how best [...]

Erik Kowalker, of Kowalker.com, wrote a post yesterday, “Why I switched to the New Living Translation.” He describes his journey to considering the NLT and his thorough, thoughtful inquiry into Bible translations, centered on his three big questions What method did the NLT translators use in making the NLT? Who were the translators of the [...]

By Mark D. Taylor The issue of sentence structure in English Bibles is interesting. On the surface, one might assume that an English Bible could/should simply follow the structure of the sentences in Hebrew and Greek. But the very concept of a “sentence” differs from language to language. Let’s look at the prologue to Romans [...]

Mark D. Taylor As a dynamic-equivalence translation, the NLT translates the Hebrew and Greek text in natural, understandable English. This means that we try to avoid technical terms that the average reader would not understand. Two such technical terms not used in the NLT are “propitiation” and “expiation.” The Bible Translation Committee chose not to [...]

Craig Blomberg has an insightful post for anyone who has ever wondered about how a committee Bible translation works. Dr. Blomberg was part of the team that worked on the New Living Translation in the 1990s. Here is what he says about his work on the Gospel of Matthew: With the New Living Translation, the [...]

One of the most common misconceptions about the NLT is that it is a paraphrase. It is not. The NLT is, in fact, a translation from Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic; it represents the work of nearly 100 scholars, specialists in the book(s) of Scripture to which they contributed. The history of the NLT is one [...]