Huffington Post ran a press release claiming that most Bible readers prefer a word-for-word Bible translation (presumed to be accurate) versus a readable translation (presumed to be inaccurate), though the sales of Bibles would not support this claim.  In the article at Huffington Post the Common English Bible is cited as an example of a less literal translation.  The scholars at www.betterbibles.com posted several reasons why the Lifeway research has an agenda and thus draws mistaken conclusions: Accuracy Battles Readability: Sureality Wins. 

Consider an additional reason:  A word-for-word translation does not exist in any Bible translation. If the translator never deviated from the syntax of the Hebrew or Greek, the resulting English would sound like gibberish. The more wooden or awkward translations sound traditional to people who are required to read them, but the result is more like Biblish than English to the ear in 2011.

The problem of accuracy versus readabilty is a straw man, and it apparently emerges from the battle over the inerrancy of the original autographs in the Bible, which is a familiar topic for the particular panel who took the reported survey.  Approximately 30 percent of Christians (according to the Pew Center for Research) think that the text of the Bible was dictated from the mind of God directly to the words on the page. (49 percent according to Pew research think that these biblical words were guided or inspired by God through human intermediaries in a particular time and place).  Those convinced by the dictation theory often claim to read the Bible "literally,"  so when they are asked if they prefer a literal word-for-word translation of the Bible into English, they respond (at least half of the time) with affirmative, yes, the Bible is the literal word of God. But in Bible translation method, the word literal means something different, which is why in surveys it (and "word for word") should be avoided in favor of another term, such as formal equivalent.  Do you prefer a formal translation or a more dynamic translation? In fact, all translation is dynamic interpretation of the meaning of the ancient words, though some attempts such as the Living Bible or the Message or The Voice are very dynamic, that is, paraphrase.  The sales charts for Bibles show how people actually behave: they want to understand what they read in the Bible, preferably without having their church or preacher rephrase the meaning for them.

Readability is actually a measure of clarity, and clarity is quantified in terms of sentence length (number of dependant clauses), multi-syllable words, and vocabulary assessment.

Comments No way Created by Melissa in 3/21/2012 9:04:22 PM I strongly disagree. Matthew 4:4 says that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedth out of the mouth of God. God gave us his words,, and he wants us to preserve his words, not just the meaning. 2 Peter 1:20 says that no prophesy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. And that is what we are getting when we read the CEB, a private interpretation of scripture. This Bible does not even underline the Nestle or Textus Receptus Greek, the "translators" even had the nerve to remove 1 John 5:7 which reads "For they are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" God not only inspired the original autographs, he inspired the copies made out of those writings. There is no excuse to say that only the meaning of the chapters or verses should be kept. God promised to preserve his words, and he did; it's just not the CEB. New Comment Created by Anonymous in 1/20/2012 12:24:52 PM I would prefer a word change in three places: 1 Maccabees 2:42, 1 Maccabees 7:13, and 2 Maccabees 14:6, where the word "Hasideans" suggests that they're from a place, rather than situation of "rightousness". New Comment Created by Anonymous in 11/22/2011 12:21:10 PM I am thankful in showing this topic about translation in the bible, But i hope the meaning is not merely far away from it as it translated. http://www.churchmanagepro.com accuracy and clarity are not exclusive Created by Paul Franklyn in 11/8/2011 6:59:58 AM To be blunt, the translators of the CEB plainly state and deliver an accurate translation! Yet faithful followers of Jesus sometimes disagree about an interpretation/translation of one text or another. But the blog post is about how marketing surveys can produce biased expectations to support an agenda when pitting accuracy against clarity. New Comment Created by bthomas in 11/8/2011 6:29:57 AM Objection that no word for word translation exist are not persuasive. At issue is can one trust the integrity of the CEB or any other translation that has less than a plain stated and practiced commitment to accurately translating the text (Hebrew or Greek) into English. Complaints that literal does not always mean literal in translation and that “dynamic equivalent” is to be preferred only reflects a biased perspective thought to be privileged by the holder. At present the integrity of the translators of the CEB and the perspectives they bring to the work are front and center at issue. It is the same reason some have routinely dismissed other translations (NASV, NIV, etc.) out of hand as either not sufficiently attractive or else biased by the perspective of the translators. If the translators of the CEB wishes to produce a modern language dynamic equivalent translation, The Message has opened that door with a highly idiomatic approach that is dynamic in the extreme. If the CEB wishes to produce a paraphrase, The Living Bible sets the pace. New Comment Created by Rev. Donald Fisher in 10/8/2011 12:19:05 PM Thanks for the clarification, Dr. Franklyn. The CEB is a beautiful gift to the Church, and I'm anxious to see it succeed. New Comment Created by Rev. Donald Fisher in 10/8/2011 12:18:08 PM Thanks for the clarification, Dr. Franklyn. The CEB is a beautiful gift to the Church, and I'm anxious to see it succeed. correcting translations Created by Paul Franklyn in 10/8/2011 9:50:19 AM Yes, based on feedback from several scholars and pastors we decided to adjust the pronoun in Romans 8:26 from itself to himself on future printings. The 3rd person masculine for the deity is one principle we aim to follow, though in the Greek here it can be read as a neutral pronoun. It takes a year or longer for a new Bible translation to stabilize. To illustrate this pattern in the Bible publishing field, because of change over centuries, Thomas Nelson sells two different versions of the KJV. In the digital age small change like this happens more gradually. The NIV made enough changes after 1978 that they copyrighted it again in 1984. Nearly all changes in the CEB over the first year are to punctuation or to a few typos in more than 930,000 words. As we prepare to print pew Bibles for the sanctuary, appearing in March 2012, we don't intend to make more minor tweaks like this one. Please contact me offline for further advice. New Comment Created by Rev. Donald Fisher in 10/8/2011 7:54:08 AM I notice a change in the online CEB text when compared to the copy I just purchased a few weeks ago (replacing "itself" with "himself" referring to the Holy Spirit in Romans 8.26). How do we know if changes being made are significant enough that our purchased texts are no longer reliable CEB texts? I was surprised that any "tweaking" would be done so quickly after initial publication. New Comment Created by Tom Durst in 10/7/2011 11:17:56 AM I find this CEB most refeshing and delightful. My journey with the Bible started in 1951, 60 years ago, when I was a teenage of 14 seeking to fill the hunger that was deep in my heart. The only Bible I had then was KJV. I'm very thankful for this new and very refreshing translation. http://www.tomdurst.com/ OT in NT Created by Paul Franklyn in 10/5/2011 3:11:09 PM Yes, I see your point here, and we know that there are equally good choices to make. When we are inconsistent, we try to be intentional. It is a thorny issue, not accidental, whether to make the OT texts read the same way in the NT citations. Since the OT to English is based on Hebrew and the NT English is based on the Greek (of the Septuagint of course) we debated and decided not to force consistency in all the NT citations. We reason that the Greek is an interpretation of the Hebrew, and the English is an interpretation of either the Hebrew or the Greek. Another example is the citation of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17. The Hebrew is very difficult in this section of Hab because we are not sure about the antecedent for the pronouns. CEB does not read the same as the English translation of the Greek phrase in the NT. Some Christian translations harmonize the languages in the inner-biblical citations (usually working from Greek to English to make it consistent with Hebrew to English) and thus giving priority to the NT meaning in these examples. From a canonical point of view, this choice merits further conversation, which is ongoing with the translation board over time. Re: single meaning for a word Created by Rev. Donald Fisher in 10/5/2011 2:41:44 PM Thanks for the reply. I don't dispute the possibility of a wide semantic range for tsedaqah, but it seems odd that the CEB OT translators would then be (seemingly) inconsistent with the NT citations of that text, where they speak of Abraham's faith being "credited as righteousness" (Romans 4) -- given the fact that the Greek word has the same semantic range as the Hebrew word but the NT translators chose not to interpret Paul's citations in that way. I should mention that I really like the CEB and am not trying to critique it unduly . . . this is just one of the places that, in the interests of clarity, I could see a reader being confused by the differences when comparing the OT text cited in the NT (and in this case finding it's not due to using the LXX). Re: single meaning for a word Created by Rev. Donald Fisher in 10/5/2011 2:33:37 PM Thanks for the reply. I don't dispute the possibility of a wide semantic range for tsedaqah, but it seems odd that the CEB OT translators would then be (seemingly) inconsistent with the NT citations of that text, where they speak of Abraham's faith being "credited as righteousness" (Romans 4) -- given the fact that the Greek word has the same semantic range as the Hebrew word but the NT translators chose not to interpret Paul's citations in that way. I should mention that I really like the CEB and am not trying to critique it unduly . . . this is just one of the places that, in the interests of clarity, I could see a reader being confused by the differences when comparing the OT text cited in the NT (and in this case finding it's not due to using the LXX). single meaning for a word Created by Paul Franklyn in 10/5/2011 1:07:36 PM Good example in Genesis, which points to the role of interpretation in translation. Is the complex Hebrew concept of tsedaqah best translated in common English in 2011 as "righteousness" (to continue 4 centuries of Tyndale's and KJV language), or in this particular case for Abraham as "high moral character," or "blameless behavior" (which is a cited definition in the Hebrew lexicon). The editors used the term "righteousness" in many places, especially in poetry, in the CEB, but they acknowledged the semantic range for the concept in this verse of Genesis. A more formal approach (again we should avoid the term literal here) would be to always translate the same Hebrew word with the same English word in every instance. But we think that would not result in more clarity or understanding when moving from one language to another. Words have multiple meanings in the original and the target languages, depending on context in the literature and the cultural period. New Comment Created by Rev. Donald Fisher in 10/5/2011 12:26:39 PM The issue of accuracy does enter in to readability, if readability is meant to include understanding (which I presume it does). And since that is the case, I do question some of the translation decisions in the CEB which move it into the "less literal" category. One simple example: Genesis 15:6 where we are told the LORD "recognized Abram’s high moral character", despite the fact that as this text is correctly quoted in the CEB New Testament no such meaning can be read into the text! 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