Translation and Interpretation

Mike Sangrey has an excellent post on translation and interpretation on the Better Bibles blog, entitled, appropriately,
Interpretation versus Translation — Competition or Teamwork?.This can be a very contentious issue, but the bottom line is that a translator cannot function without interpretation. Normally we complain about interpretations that we don’t like. Formal equivalence advocates like to leave the options open, but this is just a more subtle form of introducing the interpretation. Can you truly produce an English translation with precisely the same range of meanings as its original in Greek or Hebrew?

A better plan for the serious student is either to learn the source languages, or to use multiple translations and read the footnotes. For translators, when there is substantial doubt as to the precise meaning to be expressed, footnotes are very valuable.

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