There’s a new way to learn Native languages: Sealaska Heritage Institute has created an online searchable dictionary with accompanying audio.
The online dictionary allows users to search words and phrases in English or Lingít (Tlingit language), Xaad Kíl (Haida language) and Shm’algyack (Tsimshian language).
The audio recordings allow users to listen to heritage language speakers pronouncing words and phrases.
SHI launched an app for the Tlingit language in 2016, and more recently launched apps for Tsimshian and Haida. But the apps only allowed users to browse words and phrases.
This new online dictionary is the first software that allows users to search words and phrases and the first that includes all three languages in one place, according to Sealaska Heritage’s May 8 announcement.
The Tlingit section includes over 50 categories of words, the Haida section has nearly 40 categories and the Tsimshian section has 30. Categories include fish, food, geography, plants and clothing.
The online dictionary and apps are available for free on SHI’s website through sealaskaheritage.org or here for direct access. The dictionary will continue to be updated with words and audio recordings.
SHI began as a nonprofit in 1980 to preserve and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures in Southeast Alaska. In the 1990s it began to make language revitalization a priority, sponsoring teaching activities and university classes and developing resources like videos, apps, podcasts and games.
“We have produced materials to revitalize our languages and apps that allow people to browse categories and hear audio. Now we have a database that offers all of that and includes a search function,” SHI President Rosita Worl said in a prepared statement. “It’s a game changer.”
LONDON — In the Disney movie “Finding Nemo,” the blue tang sidekick Dory — voiced by Ellen DeGeneres — says she doesn’t speak whale, only to go on and do exactly that.
Now humans want to get in on the act, looking to record and monitor sperm whales as part of an ambitious project to understand what they are saying to each other.
Giovanni Petri, a professor at Northeastern University in London, is one of the founding members of the Cetacean Translation Initiative — or Project CETI for short — that has the potential to translate whale-speak.
Now the lead network scientist on the project, Petri is working with a team of marine biologists, cryptographers, linguists, roboticists, engineers and underwater acousticians from more than 15 research partner institutions across nine countries.
Together with artificial intelligence, they are trying to make sense of what is being said underwater by sensitively tracking and recording sperm whales using boats, buoys, drones, cameras and other technology.
As the field workers make their recordings of sperm whales in the waters around the island of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean, Petri and his team have been preparing tools and models using already-available data to map potential networks and patterns in their communication.
In a paper published May 14 in the eLife journal titled “Evidence of social learning across symbolic cultural barriers in sperm whales,” Petri and his seven co-authors say a model they have produced may have helped establish a breakthrough.
CETI is sensitively recording the way sperm whales communicate via an aquatic type of morse-code that involves click-based patterns. Photos by Amanda Cotton
The peer-reviewed paper provides evidence that clans of sperm whales share similarities in so-called “vocal style” when in close proximity or even in overlapping territory, potentially hinting at intercultural learning among whales.
The research suggests it is possible that sperm whale clans occupying the same region pick up the vocal styles of their neighbors.
The findings follow on from a separate paper published only days before by CETI-associated experts that suggested there is a type of sperm whale phonetic alphabet.
Sperm whales are complex creatures that live in matriarchal and organized societies, and have been found to share dialects and hold strong multigenerational family bonds.
These massive mammals — males can reach up to 18 meters, or nearly 60 feet, in length, almost as long as a bowling lane — have the largest brains of any species and converse with each other using an aquatic type of morse-code that involves click-based patterns. These rhythmic sequences of clicks are known as codas.
Scientists have discovered that sperm whales belonging to the same tightly-knit clan will talk with their own style — a form of clan “accent” — using what experts refer to as “identity codas.”
What Petri’s research has found is that, when looking at so-called “non-identity codas,” which make up 65% of sperm whale signals, whale clans communicate in a vocal style that is “more similar” to nearby clans.
The Italian’s team applied a new analytical approach that focused on how sub-coda structure differentiates from clan to clan, effectively describing how clicks are put together in time to form codas. This in turn was used to define the vocal style for a group of whales.
By quantitatively comparing the vocal styles of different clans, they found that the vocal styles of non-identity codas became more similar with clans whose territories overlap, while no effect was observed for the identity codas of those clans.
Darren Gibbons, Yaniv Aluma and Odel Harve at the CETI Core Whale Listening Station. Photo by Project CETI
This, the paper argues, “suggests that geographic overlap induces vocal styles to become more similar between clans, without jeopardizing each clan’s acoustic identity signals”.
Petri and his cohorts initially built their analytical model using a small set of data from two small clans based in the waters off Dominica, giving them a feeling that “something was going on but we couldn’t really prove it.”
It was only when handed a larger selection of data from at least 10 clans from across the Pacific Ocean that they were able to test it properly.
“We had that [the model], we had developed the data, we could differentiate the families, we could do many different things but we couldn’t do this large scale comparison between clans as we had no spatial dimensions,” Petri said.
“So when this Pacific data emerged, all of a sudden we could do that and we actually did it in an afternoon because everything else was ready,” he said. “That is when we started feeling that there was something very important here.”
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It was then time to bring in the experts, including those who had provided the original recordings of the two Dominica clans.
“My team is mostly mathematicians and physicists, so we can only go so far,” Petri explained. “We see something that we think is true but then when we bring in (a field biologist who) could say that what we were seeing was actually meaningful.”
The question now is, does this breakthrough help the brains behind CETI to understand what the whales are saying to each other?
“No! But we would love to,” Petri said.
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He said scientists think that identity codas, while key for clans in identifying their members, “don’t really convey meaning” and that, with his and his colleagues’ new paper being one of the first to focus on non-identity codas, there needs to be more research on what those communications mean.
But with sperm whales being huge creatures that can dive to depths of 2 kilometers during their hunt for prey, tracking their movements can prove a challenge.
“Even just recording these animals is difficult,” Petri said. “Now imagine adding something more, which is having sound, communication and their behavior.
“The important thing for us would be to be able to say, ‘They are saying this when they do this,’ or ‘Someone says this and then this behavior appears.’” he said. “At that point, you can start actually making the connection. But that is very hard to do.”
Petri’s next project has already started after CETI scientists witnessed up close and personal in summer 2023 a rare event — the first scientific record of a sperm whale birth since 1986. CETI, which received $33 million in funding from The Audacious Project to get started, is due to publish its findings about the birth next year.
“We got very lucky last summer because we spotted a very large group of animals and it was weird behavior because they were staying at the surface,” Petri said. “And then eventually they were moving around, there was some blood coming out and then there was a birth event.
“Now we are working on that data. We have the video footage and we are trying to work out if we can understand the social interactions that they were having at that moment. What was happening, who was the mother, was it a communal thing? We are getting there.”
The obligatory checkbox on OpenAI’s website, which requires visitors to verify that they are human, seems almost tongue-in-cheek following the company’s latest release, GPT-4o. (The “o” stands for “omni.”)
In a May 13, 2024 announcement, OpenAI described the newest version of its large language model as a “step towards much more natural human-computer interaction,” citing a range of new or improved capabilities, such as human-like response time in conversations and the interpretation of emotions through facial expressions.
“With GPT-4o, we trained a single new model end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning that all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network,” the press release explained.
TechCrunch reported that ChatGPT-4o is now “more multilingual,” with OpenAI claiming “enhanced performance in around 50 languages.”
Indeed, OpenAI’s press release includes a bar graph comparing BLEU scores for audio translation by OpenAI and several competitors. GPT-4o, according to OpenAI, earned the highest BLEU score, with Gemini a very close second. The company also noted “significant improvement on text in non-English languages.”
Real-time (live) translation is a perennial favorite among professionals and laypeople alike, inviting the inevitable comparisons to the literary babel fish, as well as waves of praise and underwhelm.
“GPT-4o broke a convention of contemporary interpreting by speaking in the third person”.
“Nobody tell them Google translate’s [sic] been doing this for years,” one observer noted in a post on X. Others disagreed, commenting that GPT-4o is “easier to use” and “slightly faster [with] less friction”
OpenAI’s demo showcases a brief conversation between OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, who asks, in Italian, what whales with the power of speech might ask humans.
“They might ask, how do we solve linear equations?” her interlocutor responds in English, an apparent callback to content from earlier in the demo. Interestingly, GPT-4o broke a convention of contemporary interpreting by speaking in the third person, rather than in the first person (with no noticeable effect on participants’ comprehension) — a fact noted on X by commentators pushing back on the inevitable “RIP translators” hot takes.
Beyond translation and interpreting, many observers also pointed out that shares in language learning app Duolingo dropped 3% during the OpenAI announcement.
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Dr. Jim Fan, a Senior Research Manager at NVIDIA, described the generated voice as “lively and even a bit flirty. GPT-4o is trying (perhaps a bit too hard) to sound like HER,” referring to the 2013 film in which a man falls in love with an AI virtual assistant voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
“It’s a pivot towards more emotional AI with strong personality, which OpenAI seemed to actively suppress in the past,” Fan concluded.
OpenAI began to roll out GPT-4o’s text and image capabilities on May 13, 2024. According to the press release, “We plan to launch support for GPT-4o’s new audio and video capabilities to a small group of trusted partners in the API in the coming weeks.”
How To Read The Maxton Hall Books In English - Save Me Trilogy Translation. Picture: Prime Video, Jaguar
By Sam Prance
Here's what Save Me author Mona Kasten has said about an English translation and how fans are reading them.
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Maxton Hall on Prime Video has left people desperate to read the books. Is the Save Me trilogy available in English though?
Maxton Hall - The World Between Us tells a tale as old as time. Ruby Bell, a scholarship student, has an enemies to lovers romance with James Beaufort, the richest boy in school. At first they cannot stand each other but, soon enough, the ice between them thaws and sparks start to fly. It's dramatic, it's emotional and, above all else, it's romantic.
Naturally, viewers are obsessed with Maxton Hall and, for anyone wanting more, the series is based on a trilogy of books called Save Me, Save You and Save Us by Mona Kasten. However, like the series, the books are in German. Is there an English translation though? Here's a guide on how you can read all three Save Me books in English.
Can you read the Save Me books in English?
Watch the Maxton Hall trailer
Unfortunately, as it stands, the Save Me books are yet to be officially published in English. Taking to Instagram in April, Mona Kasten shared a poster of the series and a fan commented: "How do I read the book in English. Mona then responded to them: "Unfortunately there's no English translation yet. But maybe a publisher will pick it up in the future!"
Based on the series being so popular, we imagine it's only a matter of time before an English publisher picks up the trilogy. If you can't wait until then though, TikToker @nicsgamesandbooks has found a way to read the books in English.
How to read the Save Me books in English
Purchase Save Me, Save You and Save Us in German on Apple Books
Open one of the books on an iPhone or iPad
Highlight the text on a full page
Press the translate option
Press the play button
You can then listen to the full translation
Repeat for each page
Like we said, it probably won't be long before an English publisher picks up the books now that the Maxton Hall TV series is such a huge success on Prime Video.
Bookmark this page and we'll let you know as soon as there are any updates on an official Save Me English translation.
Listen live to Capital, and catch up on any shows you missed, on Global Player.
When going to church on Sundays, it is extremely common for the pastor to read a Bible verse in one specific translation — such as the New International Version or The Message — then use a different Bible translation, such as King James Version or American Standard Version for a different verse. This can lead to some confusion for the congregation because there are so many different versions of the same book. This is a common issue that scholars have dealt with for many years. The differences boil down to whether the translation of the Bible is a literal word-for-word translation or a paraphrased thought-for-thought translation.
Why Isn’t There Just One Translation of the Bible?
Jerome in his study, by Pieter Coecke van Aelst the Elder, c. 1530, Source: The Walters Art Museum
Brandon Farris is a content creator who has a YouTube series in which he searches for a random recipe online and uses Google Translate to translate it into a different language. Then he takes that new translation and brings it back to English. He continues this process five or six times and then tries to follow the new recipe, which, as you may suspect, results in a complete mess of a dish. One time, he ended up sautéing water.
Although this is a silly explanation, it illustrates the point perfectly: Translating from one language to another is a VERY difficult process and can result in contextual errors.
It is also extremely difficult for people to read the same text and draw the same conclusions. In the United States, there are wildly differing opinions on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which is written in the native language of the majority of Americans.
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It’s easy to see how a text that dates back 2700 years in places and began as an oral tradition, could be interpreted differently. Scholars are not known for being the most agreeable type either.
Scribes, by Jordan Daniel Singer, 2022, Source: the Text & Canon Institute Phoenix Seminary
To give an example, Marcus Aurelius’ journal was published as a book called The Meditations and has been translated numerous times. Here are three separate translations of the same passage, as pointed out by Ryan Holiday in his Daily Stoic email, and sent out on November 13, 2023:
Gregory Hays: “What’s left for us to prize? I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That’s the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do…And teaching and education…So that’s what we should prize. ”
Robin Waterfield: “What’s left to value? This, in my opinion: acting or refraining from action as dictated by the way we’re made. And here our occupations and crafts show the way, since it’s the aim of every craft that what it makes should fit the purpose for which it was made…And what else is it that tutors and teachers strive for? So that’s where value lies.”
Meric Casaubon: “What is there remaining that should be dear unto thee? This I think: that in all thy motions and actions thou be moved, and restrained according to thine own true natural constitution and Construction only. And to this even ordinary arts and professions do lead us. For it is that which every art doth aim at, that whatsoever it is, that is by art effected and prepared, may be fit for that work that it is prepared for…What else doth the education of children, and all learned professions tend unto? Certainly then it is that, which should be dear unto us also.”
Bust of Marcus Aurelius, 170-80 CE, Source: The French Ministry of Culture
These are all the exact same words, written in the exact same language, but translated very differently. Yet, they all draw on the same idea and hit the same general thought. They were writing at different times, so they wrote for a different audience in terms of language.
This is the exact issue that has affected the Bible. Without even getting into the logistics of who decided what is and isn’t scripture, there is an interpretation issue. As Greg Gilbert points out on Crossway.org, the major conflict comes from how literal the interpretation needs to be. There are some translators that vote for a more “word-for-word” translation as the best option to get the most accurate Bible; whereas, others posit that a more “thought-for-thought” translation is better suited to the modern people due to its readability.
Difficulties with a Literal Translation of the Bible
Martin Luther Translating the Bible, Wartburg Castle, 1521, by Eugene Siberdt, 1898, Source: Wikimedia Commons
Languages are beautiful. The only problem is that they are culturally variant. The United States doesn’t have a national language but is known to predominantly speak English because the nation was founded by Great Britain, where they also speak English.
Both countries speak English but have variances for the same words. In the United States, we don’t have the letter “u” in the word “color.” This specific instance is due to the United States trying to separate the nation from the perceived oppressive Monarchy of ruling Britain.
It gets more intense than that though. Even within the United States, you will get specific verbiage directly related to geographic location. People in New York City will say words that don’t necessarily mean the same thing in Alabama, and the inverse is true too. It’s not often a New Yorker will say “y’all” or an Alabaman will say “schlep.”
Although contextual clues will ensure these people will be able to understand each other, there are broader examples of words that don’t directly translate. Even though Spanish is also a Romantic, or Latin-based, language, the word “sombremesa” doesn’t have a direct translation into English. This word isn’t necessarily needed in English due to differences in cultures. It can be translated to mean “the time spent after a meal just leisurely hanging out and chatting.” But in Britain and the United States, this isn’t a cultural norm, so that’s not a word that’s needed.
William Tyndale, 1592, Source: National Portrait Gallery, London
2 Timothy 3:16-17 in the NIV says, “(16) All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, (17) so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work,” which is often interpreted to mean that the Bible in and of itself, is, at a minimum, divinely inspired. The New International Version, is often cited as a middle-of-the-road translation.
If you read the same verse in the 21st century King James Version it says, “(16) All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, (17) that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for all good works.”
The 21st-century King James Version is an updated version of the original King James Version that was published in 1611. It’s been distilled from the original language to be as readable as possible — and it’s a much less accurate word-for-word translation of the Bible.
Dr. Peter J. Glurry wrote in a short blog post for the Text & Canon Institute of Phoenix Seminary, “The simple answer is that we have errors in our manuscripts because God never promised to keep them out.” Dr. Glurry is saying that the initial words or text may have been divinely inspired, but the scribes who interpreted and translated these words may not have been as precise. Which, in turn, means there may be some errors along the way.
Sodom and Gomorrah Afire, by Jacob Jacobsz de Wet II, 1680, Source: Wikimedia Commons
Additionally, when it comes to literal translations of the Bible, there are new archeological discoveries and other contextual clues that may give us a whole new meaning to what was originally stated. A perfect example of this is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah laid out in Genesis 19:1-22 when the mob is threatening to assault two Angels. This is commonly referred to as a tale in contention of homosexuality.
However, if you take into context the later account in Judges 19:22-26, where a similar situation happens and someone’s home is surrounded by a mob, you end up with a different understanding of the story. In the Genesis account, Lot offers up his daughters to protect himself. In the Judges account, a concubine is offered, and she is sexually assaulted and left for dead.
If you take both of these accounts into consideration, you learn that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was not directed at this single occurrence, but multiple wicked acts, including the attempted assault on someone’s guest.
A pile of dictionaries, by Langenscheidt, Source: Wikimedia Commons
To add to all of these difficulties, you have to take into consideration the continual evolution of language. This is something that has happened throughout history, and we can see it today. After all, what is a “yeet”? And how does “bet” mean “ok cool” or “hot” mean attractive?
Technology and the evolution of sociology naturally lead to the development of new phrases. It’s difficult to track the emergence of new terms and phrases because, although it’s always changing, the purpose of a dictionary isn’t to tell you the direct definition of a word but to report on the common usage over time.
Some words are extremely difficult to define, yet everyone knows what they mean. The quickest example is to have a layperson attempt to define “apple” or “furniture.” Some things in a language everyone knows because they’re basic, but when you try to attach a definition to them, it gets too complex.
If you look at the Dictionary.com definition for furniture, it reads “the movable articles, as tables, chairs, desks or cabinets, required for use or ornament in a house, office, or the like.” This means, that the definition also includes vases or the empty cup on your desk branded with the college you went to that you keep pens in.
It makes so much sense that scholars disagree and argue about the inherent definition of words. So if a word-for-word translation is so bad, is a thought-for-thought look better?
Problems with Thought-for-Thought Translations of the Bible
The First Translation of the Bible into English (Wycliffe Reading His Translation of the New Testament to His Protector, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in the Presence of Chaucer and Gower, his Retainers), by Ford Madox Brown, 1847, Source: Artsdot.com
On the opposite side of the spectrum from the literal word-for-word translation of the Bible is the thought-for-thought translation. The best-known are The Message and the 21st-century King James Version. They are considerably distilled versions of original Hebrew and Greek texts.
As highlighted by Biblica.com, a word-for-word translation is extremely valuable for individual study, but it doesn’t lend itself to broader worship. There are those that believe the broader thought translation is better as it is much easier to understand and results in a larger group of people comprehending the meaning.
This idea is furthered by writer Don Stewart in his piece on translations of the Bible. Stewart says that the variance in interpretations and translations ultimately helps legitimize the Bible because they all are saying the same basic thing. The fact that there are so many copies of the same documents reporting the same stories adds to the credibility.
Titivillus, patron demon of scribes, who introduced errors into their work, 14th century, Source: Wikiwand
The opposite goes for when a person tweets something on X (formerly Twitter) about some obscure movie fact that they heard from their cousin’s friend who was an assistant to the set designer for the film, it doesn’t seem very legit. However, if this person says this, then an actor in the film says the same thing in an interview with a big magazine such as Cosmopolitan, then it’s going to have a lot more credibility.
But if that actor isn’t a very credible person and is known for spouting off nonsense, then it won’t have much backing. But if that noncredible actor says it, and it gets backed up by more people who also worked on the film and the director comes in and says it happened on the commentary of the film, then it’s considered true.
The likelihood of every person recounting this fictional fact in the same manner is slim to none. Each person will have their own take on the event. But it doesn’t make it untrue if Tim on the set remembers that there was a lucky cat on set with orange fur, while Sarah the actor in the film knows that it was mainly white with orange on it. That doesn’t mean either person is wrong, just that they had different experiences and the film had a lucky cat on set. What matters most about the fact is that it happened. It didn’t have to happen in a specific way to be “more accurate.”
The Gospel of Luke, from Codex Alexandrinus, 5th century CE, Source: Wikimedia Commons
Part of the difficulty in deciding the word-for-word translation is that there are multiple manuscripts out there. The translator will have to decide which manuscript they will use and then justify why they’re doing that.
For the Bible, translators have had to decide between Byzantine manuscripts and Alexandrian manuscripts. Byzantine texts take the majority of the original texts and create a cohesive interpretation of what the majority says. Alexandrian texts, on the other hand, used the texts written within a specific timeframe. The issue of doing this is in the determination of the legitimacy of the text it creates. This area is where a word-for-word translation has the advantage.
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, first edition cover, 1952, Source: Wikimedia Commons
While doing this determination and distillation of the text you may end up with massive differences such as those outlined in John Steinbeck’s magnum opus East of Eden. In the novel there is a pivotal scene where the characters are discussing the Bible and one of them says he went to the original language to interpret a single word.
The specific quote discusses the different translations of the Bible when Lee says, “Don’t you see? . . . The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”
The thought-for-thought translations can lead to some confusion as to what the correct intention of the author was. With the idea that the entirety of the Bible is the “Word of God,” it’s important to get it right. Otherwise, you’re preaching a falsity.
In the scene laid out by John Steinbeck, the speaker is giving people a choice and establishing free will rather than predestination. This is a major point of contention in theological debate and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to come to a conclusion on it.
The Sermon, by Gari Melchers, 1886, Source: The Smithsonian American Art Museum
Another difficulty in doing a thought-for-thought translation of the Bible based on the multiple genres that make up the Bible. As explained by Minister Orpheus Heyward, the multiple genres of the Bible matter when trying to glean the desired understanding of a passage.
In terms of the thought-for-thought translation, some of the context will be lost due to the genre needing different readings. Some things in the Bible are meant to be read as songs (Psalms), metaphors, proverbs, and literal history. Sometimes these different genres don’t translate well into other languages and may become too confusing when trying to do a thought-for-thought translation. It may cause the translation to lose its impact.
Considerations for a Proper Translation of the Bible
Jesus preaching to a crowd, woodcut, by Hans Wechtlin the Elder, 1508, Source: The Welcome Collection
As you can see, there are a lot of difficulties when working on proper translations of the Bible. The translator will have to figure out which one best fits their goal.
New Testament scholar Dr. Gurry was interviewed by Dr. Brian Arnold on the Faith Seeking Understanding podcast created by the Phoenix Seminary. In it, Dr Gurry lays out five important questions that translators must consider when they’re doing their translation. He also gives a little information on how the answers to these questions affect the outcome of the translation itself.
The first question to consider is, “Who is the intended audience?” The translator must consider who they are trying to translate for in terms of age and maturity. That maturity is not just a literal maturity, but a spiritual maturity too. Education level is also of prime importance.
This all matters in terms of how the Bible will be translated. For example, are they translating for a Spanish child or a Biblical scholar from England? These sorts of questions will determine how in-depth the translation must be, as a thought-for-thought translation would likely work better for the child whereas, the Bible scholar would likely prefer a more literal word-for-word translation of the Bible.
The second question to be considered is: “Will this be a fresh translation or a revision of a former translation?” This will alter the translation significantly. For example, a translation of the original Greek and Hebrew text will have to set itself apart by having a different translation or take on specific words than other current in-print translations.
King James I, by John de Critz, 1605, Source: Museo Del Prado
On the other hand, a revision can maintain the integrity of the already completed translation but make it more readable or else interpret it for the desired intent. A translation of the original King James Version from 1611 may be done to make the words more understandable to a modern audience while keeping the beauty of the original.
Thirdly, what text will the translators translate? Someone may want to go all the way back to Tyndale’s translation or Martin Luther’s translation in German. Regardless of the choice, it will matter for the end result.
It could be a translation of a newly discovered text that they want to add to the Bible, which would naturally result in a very different understanding. By adding in, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the context of another book in the Bible might be wildly different.
Fourth, how do you handle culturally specific terms? Early in this article, a reference was made to how even within the United States there are cultural differences in how people talk and the words they use.
Printing Books, by Philipe Gale, 1590-3, Source: The National Gallery of Art
With that in mind, it makes sense that there would be some difficulty in deciding how to handle situations that don’t really translate well. These need to be handled in a specific way to get to the desired goal of being understood correctly by the target audience.
The final consideration for a translator is how much will the translation explain. This is important for the sake of footnotes. Will the translation just say the word-for-word translation or will it dig into what it means? Are there going to be notes added to it explaining what’s going on?
These are important considerations to get to the most effective translation of the Bible possible. People need to know what they’re reading and what it means in a more modern context. That way, to harken back to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, people don’t assume that Lot offering up his daughters was done maliciously.
Which Is the Best Translation of the Bible?
The Title Page for the Coverdale Bible, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1535, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s been hinted at throughout the article, but a common follow-up question people have as to why there are so many different translations is “which one is best?” Hopefully, it has been conveyed well enough that there isn’t really a “best” translation. They each serve a specific purpose and are useful in their own way. But there is a “best” when speaking in more specific terms.
The kind of cheating answer, but nonetheless the absolute truth, is that the “best” is going to vary depending on the goal you’re trying to achieve. If you go to a modern church service, the general guidelines offered for a well-written sermon are: Include a main headline with three points and one to three subpoints to back up the initial point.
To help support their argument, pastors will often use multiple translations of the Bible for a single sermon. They will utilize the one that is written in the most comprehensive way to support their point. Sometimes the New International Version will word a verse more befitting the end goal than say the King James Version. Or maybe even the readability of The Message will help illustrate the point the best.
New International Version of the Bible, by Hoshie, Source: Wikimedia Commons
All of this really boils down to achieving the desired outcome. If you’re interested in a general overview of the Bible, you may want to turn The Message or an NIV translation. But if you’re trying to dig deep, then you will likely want the American Standard Version to get a more literal translation and to support you digging deeper into the original language the specific verse was written in. Doing this might result in a greater understanding of the author’s intent and, depending on your religious beliefs, a more clear understanding of what God truly believes.
That said, collect as many or as few translations as you want. After all, you can likely find every single version for free online.
