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The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God's Word to the World. Edited by Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, and Steven M. Voth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003, 428 pp., $24.99.
This book is a collection of essays on Bible translation presented in honor of Ronald F. Youngblood, emeritus professor of OT at Bethel Seminary West, San Diego, California. I am pleased to write this review because I have admired Ron for his great intellect, academic accomplishments, and spiritual stature since the days we were fellow students at Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning.
The book is divided into three sections: (1) the theory of Bible translation; (2) the history of Bible translation; and (3) the practice of Bible translation. Each section contains six essays. The book contains a table of contents, a list of contributors, an extensive table of abbreviations, and a subject index, all of which make it user-friendly as a resource. However, it does not have an organized bibliography, but rather a list of resources at the end of each essay; and unfortunately it has endnotes for each essay rather than the more convenient footnotes.
The book clearly is a defense of the TNIV. Most contributors had something to do with that translation and have some association with the International Bible Society's Committee on Bible Translation. Moisés Suva's essay, "Are Translators Traitors? Some Personal Reflections," opens the first section with a discussion of the subtle difficulties inherent in any translation process. His examples of translation difficulties, often drawn from his own experience, illustrate the necessity for translators to be thoroughly conversant in the grammar and culture of both the source and target languages in which they work. He argues that word-for-word translations often fail to accurately convey the meaning intended by the original author, and that translators should concentrate on transferring meaning rather than words from one language to another, thus the need for dynamic (functional) equivalence to be a part of any translational theory.
In the second essay, "Bible Translation Philosophies with Special Reference to the New International Version," Kenneth L. Barker, formerly the executive secretary of the NIV Translation Center, surveys the spectrum of translation theories, placing the Formal Equivalence Theory at one extreme and the Functional (or Dynamic) Equivalence...