Why don’t we see more Bible translations that try to take the author’s style into account? Is it because we unconsciously wish to present a more coherent scripture than we actually have? Translations in English range in formality from the lofty King James to the down-home Cotton Patch version, but while the tone varies from translation to translation, it remains consistent within. Modern translations tend to all sound alike to me; they’re all mealy-mouthed Sunday School gruel.
Here’s a rather light-hearted stab at Mark:
The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Son of God
Isaiah the prophet prophesized: “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” So John the Baptist showed up from the boonies, preaching at people to change their ways, get baptized, and get their sins forgiven.
Everybody in Judea and Jerusalem went to see him, and they all got baptized down in the Jordan river, and confessed everything they did wrong.
John the Baptist wore a camel hair and a leather belt and ate bugs and wild honey. He preached that there was someone even more hardcore than him who was coming: “I’m not worthy to even carry his stuff,” he said. “I’ve been baptizing you with water, but he’s going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost!”
So Jesus came down from Nazareth, in Galilee, to get baptized. When he came up out of the water, he saw the sky split open, and the Spirit come down to him like a dove, and a voice from the sky said, “I’m proud of you, son, and I love you.”
Right away the Spirit sent him into the desert. He stayed out there for forty days, being tempted by the Accuser. Angels came and took care of him, out there with the wild animals.
When John the Baptist got put in jail, Jesus went back to Galilee and preached about God’s good news. “It’s time,” he said. “God’s Kingdom is coming. Make a change, and trust the good news.”
Down by the lake of Galilee, Jesus met Simon and his brother Andrew — they were commercial fishers. Jesus said, “Come follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.” Right away they dropped their nets and followed him.
A little further down he saw Zebedee’s James and his brother John in their boat fixing their gear. Right away he called them, and they left their old man Zebedee and the deckhands in the boat and followed him.
Right away…
I’m finding it difficult to translate some of the more refined parts of the NT into an appropriate formal English style, because the rather stilted periods of the usual translations seem to have gotten stuck in my brain.
I wonder if part of the problem is that it is often one group of people doing the entire translation so they end up sounding the same. An alternative would be to have a different person/group doing each author separately so as to keep other authors from influencing the tone of the one being translated… if that makes any sense.
I totally agree. It’s a sticky problem.
One of the coolest translations I’ve read is Lattimore’s translation of the Gospels. He’s a classicist, not a Biblical scholar, so his translation is just fresh and different enough to make you sit up and notice things you’d never noticed before. He tries to reflect the Greek style of each Gospel.
He includes Revelation just for fun, because as he says it’s the easiest book of all to translate: you don’t have to worry about what it means :-)