The other day, my buddy Keith Keyser sent me a link to an article by James Hamilton Jr., an associate professor at Southern Baptist Seminary whereby Hamilton lays down what he sees are the logical ends of adhering to dynamic equivalence theory (going forward I’ll refer to it as functional equivalence) when it comes to Bible Translations. In the end, he says, the translator has decided to translate what he thinks the author means over against the words the author uses. His main examples were grounded on the “glory” language of the Gospel according to John and the importance of retaining that sort of thing. His closing thoughts are that if one doesn’t know the original languages then one should stick to a formal equivalence translation.
I’m torn because I’m a bilingual Hispanic American.
