Dan Wallace has a helpful post “Fifteen Myths about Bible Translation.”
Here are three that caught my eye:
15. Chapter and verse numbers are inspired. These were added centuries later. Chapter numbers were added by Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the early 13th century. Verse numbers were not added until 1551. Robert Estienne (a.k.a. Stephanus), a Parisian printer, added verse numbers to the fourth edition of his Greek New Testament. The pocket-sized two-volume work (which can be viewed at www.csntm.org) has three parallel columns, one in Greek and two in Latin (one Erasmus’s Latin text, the other Jerome’s). To facilitate ease of comparison, Stephanus added the verse numbers. Although most of the breaks seem natural enough, quite a few are bizarre. Neither chapter numbers nor verse numbers are inspired.
1. Perhaps the number one myth about Bible translation is that a word-for-word translation is the best kind. Jerome argued against this, noting that his translation of the Vulgate was not word-for-word, but sense-for-sense. And that’s as it should be. Anyone who is conversant in more than one language recognizes that a word-for-word translation is simply not possible if one is going to communicate in an understandable way in the receptor language. Yet, ironically, even some biblical scholars who should know better continue to tout word-for-word translations as though they were the best. Perhaps the most word-for-word translation of the Bible in English is Wycliffe’s, done in the 1380s. Although translated from the Latin Vulgate, it was a slavishly literal translation to that text. And precisely because of this, it was hardly English.
2. Similar to the first point is that a literal translation is the best version. In fact, this is sometimes just a spin on the first notion. For example, the Greek New Testament has about 138,000–140,000 words, depending on which edition one is using. But no English translation has this few. Here are some examples:
RSV 173,293
NIV 175,037
ESV 175,599
NIV 2011 176,122
TNIV 176,267
Read the whole thing.
Very true but try to tell that to someone whose pastor has told them that word-for-word is the most accurate translation. I get plenty of customers like this. Some are willing to listen, others just want me to point them to the “most literal.” Even that gets tricky.
Yes…you have a precarious position to balance your knowledge with customer need. Never easy; always necessary.
I do agree, but would add that if you want the best translation, you really should study both word-for-word and sense-for-sense. Combine that with a study of the literal translation of the Greek/Hebrew words in the Bible, plus divine discernment, and you’ll have a very good understanding of the Bible.