This was underwhelming. It felt polemic, with an author who either didn't understand the complexity of what he was talking about or one who wasn't willing to reveal that, lest it weaken his argument.

To pick on one example, on page 16 he says 'the NIV does not preserve what the original says with the phrase "the Lord of hosts".' Naturally, the original is Hebrew, so it does not say that; in fact, it seems that the Hebrew צְבָאוֹת would be better translated "armies", giving us "the Lord of armies" and I would argue whatever the Hebrew said, "the Lord of hosts" would be a bad translation into modern English. (This seems part of a pattern; page 28-29, sections 8 and 9, are all about preserving the often obscure KJV language, not because it is a more faithful translation, but because it is perceived as more literary or beautiful. It never seems to be considered that those goals might be in conflict.)

Likewise, on page 20 he mentions '"the obedience of faith" as it appears in the original text'; even though he mentions Greek, he doesn't touch at all on the actual original text. From his examples, it strikes me as blindly regurgitating the Greek as English without understanding it well enough to actually form it as good English. Is the correct preposition "of"? I don't know Greek, but I know enough of enough languages to know that prepositions are a serious bane of language learners, and one preposition in a foreign language can be best translated by any number of prepositions in English, depending on context. Instead of wrestling with how to process the Greek into English without fixing one interpretation or producing word salad, he proclaims "the obedience of faith" as the original and goes on. (Likewise, on page 28, he says that "The goal is to know what the original authors said. If they passed difficulties on to their readers, translators need to do the same." Does he fail to understand that what might be difficult to a translator now might not have been difficult to a reader then?)

On page 19, he complains that 'Dynamic equivalent translators ... change words that are considered either difficult or "not how we would say it";', which leaves me questioning if he understands what translation means!

The thesis statement, as summarized by myself, is that we should translate words, not meaning. To this effect, near the end of the work (page 21), he quotes "someone" as saying "if the words are taken from us, the exact meaning is of itself lost"*. To which I raise a glass and say "traduttore, traditore." We take from the original its languages and its words and force upon it our language and our words, and hope to preserve what cannot possibly survive. One can not translate words; one must translate meaning, if the output is to be understandable English. There's points struck home about overly paraphrasing translations, but the argument is lost when he declares his side correct without wrestling with the depths of the issue.

* In a endnote, he offers as source From Eternity to Eternity by Erich Sauer as translated by G. H. Land. I do not know the context of the original, but I have to wonder if G. H. Land was more in touch with the irony than Ryken was.

This short, little booklet is a polemic against the dynamic equivalence method of biblical translation. He paints all such Bible translations with a broad brush, but there are definitely better and worse translations. Most of his examples don't even demonstrate much difference between the literal and dynamic equivalence approaches. The entire essay is only on the one, narrow aspect of translation. Other points of contention aren't even broached, e.g. which source manuscripts are used. Although he has a few good points, he overstates his case on nearly every claim. ( )

This booklet is a short argument for the superiority of translations of the formal equivalence type over the dynamic equivalence type. It'd be helpful in choosing a Bible version, even if you don't buy all of Ryken's argument. ( )