Word For Word Accuracy Or Thought For Thought Equiv Alence--A Comparative Study On New American Standard Bible And New International Version

The Bible, the most translated work in the history in terms of the number of people engaged in this work and the number of the languages into which it has been translated, has been rendered into various versions by different translators who are guided by different principles. By comparing two popular modern English Bible versions, New American Standard Bible (NASB), a literal translation and New International Version (NIV), the most popular present day English version translated under the principle of dynamic equivalence, the writer suggests that in spite of the apparent differences between these two versions, the two versions complement each other in that they are produced for their well defined readers and neither of them is perfect in terms of the application of their preferred translation principles. By outlining the traditional debate on "literal" and "free", the writer first discusses the reasons why in the field of translating, the traditional emphasis on the form has gradually given away to the priority of meaning. Next, he describes some people's hostile attitude toward a new Bible translation especially toward a more readable one and explains that such a perspective results from the ignorance of the nature of translating. Then after pointing out the practical difficulties in applying the principle of dynamic equivalence in the way as Eugene A. Nida proposes, the writer suggests that a more meaningful and practical approach to analyze the real differences between these two versions is to describe the equivalence that each of them has achieved on different levels, i.e. word, grammatical and textual level. Through this analysis, the writer concludes that in most circumstances, NASB can be understood although a lot of labor is needed on the part of the reader, but on the other hand, complete equivalence is not completely achieved in NIV. As a conclusion, the last part of the paper shows that due to its clarity of the meaning and appropriateness of the style of modern English, for general purposes, NIV is much more welcomed than NASB, which is more suitable for theologians and Bible students and some serious Christians who have some knowledge of the Hebrew, Latin and Greek language, for it enables them to better appreciate the style of the original text.