More on translation difficulties

Eddie Arthur's Kouya Chronicle pointed me to this article about some of the difficulties in the task of Bible translation.

It mentions how that translating from one language to another is a task of compromise with opposing ideals causing translators difficulty and frustration. That's certainly been my experience, and it's part of the reason why there's no perfect Bible translation. And that in turn is part of the reason why there are so many different English Bible translations -- every one has to apply their own set of predefined weightings in making the compromises which translation of necessity demands due to linguistic and cultural mismatches.

Many Bible translations are forced to make middle-of-the-road decisions so as to ensure that the final product is marketable to the Christian public. The Open English Translation of the Bible (OET) handles this in a different way -- it consists of a collection of four different linked versions each of which is able to make some more extreme decisions than most traditional translations, yet the compromises between things like accuracy and naturalness are balanced across the entire set. Thus, although compromised like every modern English Bible translation has to be, it tries to make the compromises more open and exposed to the reader.

Introduction to the Open English Translation

I've been thinking for a loooong time about starting a new English Bible translation (unashamedly inspired by the public domain World English Bible (WEB) of Michael Paul Johnson and team). After much searching and pondering, I've come up with the name: Open English Translation (OET) of the Bible.

Open (unashamedly inspired by Open Source software) expresses my desire to make it freely available for others to use or adapt in any way. I haven't decided on a licence yet, so feel free to make suggestions. I'm also wanting to make it open in the sense of open for others to join in and help with (but that doesn't mean that it would be open to everyone -- just those who show a genuine interest and ability). As mentioned in prior blogs, there's a number of others way ahead of me in developing the necessary (web) software tools for that kind of project.

English because it'll be an English translation. (It seems a little ethnocentric to me to leave the language qualifier out of the title, although it is true that in most cases that language of the title itself indicates the language of the translation.)

Translation just to remind readers/users that it is indeed just a translation of the original Scriptures. (Again it seems a little deficient to me if a book called something like The Holy Bible doesn't clearly remind its readers that it's not the original.)

I'll try to progressively blog about various aspects of the OET over the next few weeks.