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We translators want to give them a basis for exegeting it right. We always have footnotes because in some passages we don't know what was really meant. There may be two or even three interpretations.

In the case of "The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith," is this God's own personal righteousness? Or is it the way in which God makes us righteous through our faith in Jesus Christ? These are very important differences, and they ought to be footnoted, ideally in the order in which the truth was recognized by the major part of Christendom.

Should I look for a different kind of translation to read aloud in church from one that I might study at my desk?

There are three kinds of translations: first, a liturgical translation; second, a common-language translation that almost everybody can read and understand; third, translations for particular constituencies—children, for example. All major languages need these three types of translation.

If you're going to have the Scriptures presented orally from the pulpit, you're not going to have a lot of footnotes. Hopefully your preacher will take time to explain some of the problems. But a Bible for public reading should not only be accurate in meaning but should have a good flow of language so that you don't have a lot of unnecessary breaks in the line.

What would you tell young people who think that Bible translation might be their calling?

Well, SIL [www.sil.org] has a good program, but young people really ought to get a good foundation in Greek and Hebrew and in cultural anthropology. Then they can pick up what is related to translation. More of the problems involve cultural anthropology than they do problems of theology.

What are the biggest challenges that the whole field of Bible translation faces? Is it just the sheer number of languages?

I think it would be a string of Mongolian languages that goes all the way from Mongolia to Turkey. A number of these languages have nothing of the Scriptures. The cultures are mostly Muslim.

It would be very important also in some of the more well-known Muslim areas to produce translations that are more relevant and on a better level of Arabic. So many of the translations reflect a very traditional form of the language.

What is the impact of multiple translations?

It makes people begin to think. As long as all people had the King James Version, they didn't think. It's terribly important to have different translations to get a good argument started.

When I was a small boy, my most important theological learning was the result of a preacher who used the 13th chapter of Revelation to prove that Mussolini was the Antichrist. One week later, another man used the same passage to prove that Mussolini wasn't the Antichrist. So I asked my father, What's wrong?

He said, Son, it's much more important to know how to doubt than it is how to believe.

An awful lot of Christians don't think. Preachers just want them to say Amen.

Has the plethora of translations saturated the market for Bibles? What further is needed?

What is really needed is for people to take the message seriously and share it with other people, focused primarily on what this message has meant to me. So many Christians love to argue about the Bible rather than take it seriously as a message that is important for their own lives. In many of the churches in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, people take the Bible's message far more seriously than they do here in America, where the Bible is so ordinary.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Eugene Nida's The Theory and Practice of Translation: With Special Reference to Bible Translating is available at Amazon.com.

For more Christianity Today articles on Bible translation, see our Bible archive.

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October 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 11