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The consensus is in: Bible translating is a very difficult job and, considering his situation and what he had to work with, William Tyndale did a remarkable job. Many reputable translators today acknowledge that Tyndale’s work was an amazing accomplishment, and are full of examples as to why the task he undertook was so difficult in his time, as well as today.

Why, not even considering the numerous persecutions he endured, Tyndale’s task and mission were difficult enough: almost certainly with no other English version of the Scriptures to refer to (Wycliffe’s hand-written version from a century before was almost certainly not available to him), and using only very limited Greek, German, Latin and Hebrew sources, he almost single-handedly translated some two-thirds of the Bible into English. His linguistic work is even more laudatory because so much of it has stood the test of time.

Without any earlier version to set precedents, he had to make thousands of personal judgment calls in choosing “just the right words” or expressions to best convey the meanings of the original text. Sometimes he could find no equivalent English expression, so he would coin new words to get to the heart of the meaning. For example, his coinage of the phrase “loving-kindness” to express the meaning of the Hebrew word hesed used so often in the Old Testament.

His translating skill and verbal sensitivity are obvious, and not only in the fact that the “Authorized” or King James Version’s translators used about 90 percent of Tyndale’s choices. His genius is further confirmed by the fact that, in several cases where the KJV translators chose to disregard Tyndale, later translators with more manuscript backing chose to go back to Tyndale’s choices. A good example is found in 1 Corinthians 13, where Tyndale translated agape as “love,” the KJV translators translated it as “charity,” and nearly all modern translations have gone back to “love.”

Tyndale set a worthy example for modern Bible translators who, though they have more ancient sources and more-modern tools, like computers, still face an arduous and complex task.

In accurately communicating the message and intent of the original writer, modern Bible translators say they have several important jobs, including:

• To find out what the original language says, not just the meaning of the individual words, but the meaning of those words as they were understood by the person who wrote them and the people who read them for the first time;

• To say the same thing in words that the target audience will understand;

• To say it in such a way that the target readers will understand the subject in the same way that the readers of the original document did.

Straightforward as that may sound, Bible translation is far from a simple thing to do, and always involves several potentially problematic steps.

First, the translator must find out what the original language says. This begins with an understanding of vocabulary—the words themselves. Vocabulary problems can be confusing—and often “confusing” means “comical.”

The classic example of misunderstood vocabulary occurs in one of the early Spanish translations of the New Testament. John 20:14f describes Jesus approaching the bereaved Mary Magdalene in the garden following his resurrection. She turned to face him and mistook him for the gardener.

But the early translator did not fully recognize the difference between the several Spanish words for turning. The word he chose is the same one the Indian women used to describe turning over a tortilla. The meaning it conveys is roughly the same as flipping a pancake. Taken literally, this translation would imply that the bereaved Mary was an acrobat: in order to turn and face Jesus, says this version, she did a flip.

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