Good News for Everyone

A very readable layman's introduction to the "secrets" of how modern Bibles are translated. Chapter 10: Science Comes to the Aid of Bible Translators diagrams how meaning is identified in the Hebrew or Greek and reproduced into English according to the "criterion of closest natural equivalence ... the touchstone of faithful translation--the guarantee of both accuracy and acceptability" (p. 109). This "closest natural equivalence," which is more widely denoted by the term "dynamic equivalence," itself has been kidnapped by some Bible publishers for their own work--notably the God's Word version. They use the term to mean something between dynamic equivalence and formal ("literal") equivalence. But if you've read this book, you'd know who said it first!