Here in the English-speaking world, there’s some controversy over which translation of the Bible is the best, most accurate, etc. In fact, some believers and/or groups have made the matter of which translation to use a point of doctrine. IOW, to hear some tell it, to use any translation of the Bible other than the King James Version is tantamount to heresy.
To give you an idea of the fanaticism to which some hold to this view, I refer you to This site.
Now, for the General Question:
I’m curious if other languages have similar problems. That is, do Spanish Christians argue with one another over which Spanish translation is the best? Is there a Spanish equivalent to the KJV; that is, a 4-centuries-old translation that many believe is the only legitimate translation into Spanish of the Word of God? How about all those other languages out there?
I am not a Christian and I’m not into the Bible as a spiritual guide. To me it’s just literature, and very important literature at that, forming the background of the whole post-Classical Western literary world.
Aesthetically, there is simply nothing that equals the KJV for beauty of language. There is a magic in reading the KJV aloud that is utterly lacking in the modern attempts. They pale into bland mush in comparison with the oratorical jewels of the KJV. But then, I like Shakespeare better than say Bret Easton Ellis. No contest, dude.
I’m not saying the KJV is perfect. It has its clunkers, like God saying “I will shew thee my hind parts.” An especially unfortunate one is, in the middle of the world’s most exquisite love song, “He hath moved my bowels.” Ugh.
Also, the KJV includes a verse in the Epistle of John that turned out to be spurious. Recent translations have removed it.
These quibbles aside, I still think that overall the KJV is the only one for people who really love beautiful English literature. And older is not necessarily better. Having been raised Catholic, I grew up reading the Douay-Rheims translation. Sorry, but it’s blah. It’s 16th-century blah which is no better than 20th-century blah. Although I hate to concede anything to the Protestants, you gotta hand it to them for the KJV as an aesthetic success.
Whoops, homie, I just saw “KJV” in your post and went off on a tangent roll. Now for your OP:
German friends of mine told me that Martin Luther essentially created the modern German language with his Bible translation. He used a synthesis of High German dialects spoken in eastern Germany, based mainly on the chancellery language of Saxony. His literary style was so effective that he singlehandedly gave the Germans their first standard language.
The implication of this seems to me that Luther’s German Bible would carry even more prestige that the KJV does in English. However, to find out its actual status in Germany vis-á-vis later translations, you would have to ask someone who lives there.
Interesting question. I’ve heard “anti-KJV-only” people argue that the existence of Bible translations in other languages prevents the KJV from being the only legitimate translation. If Luther’s translation is the word of God in German, what about the parts where it differs from the KJV? If there is no perfect translation in any language but English, well, now we’re just (further) into crazyland.
I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to the OP though.
A lot of it would have to do with the “officialization” of a translation – remember, the KJV was the “AUTHORIZED version” for Britain and its colonies.
In the Spanish case specifically: Since the Spanish-speaking world remained overwhelmingly Catholic (and in many countries officialy so) until late into the 20th Century, for most of the public electing a preferred general-release translation was a non-issue.
However, on the protestant side there WAS a historically key version, the Reina-Valera Version (named after Casiodoro de la Reina and Antonio(IIRC) de Valera, the key figures in the work), that came up during the Reformation. It became very widespread and much of its language and phrasing became “expected” even in later translations.
Since the expansion of Protestantism in the Hispanic world is a late-XXth Century phenomenon and the adoption of vernacular-language Liturgy is post-1964, there has been better receptivity to updated, improved translations.
Unless things have changed—Coming from the Latin Vulgate—Roman Catholics/Catholic countries use the DOUAY VERSION of the Old Testament and the English speakers use the CONFRATERNITY VERSION of the New Testament. There is a BIBLICAL COMMISSION in Rome that oversees translations into the various languages.
The Douai-Rheims version for the Old Testament was supplanted in the late 1960s, with the combined Confraternity and a newer OT translation in the New American Bible. This was the accepted translation in the U.S. for many years.
The current Lectionary (from which readings are proclaimed at Mass) is a more recent translation, geared to be easier to be read aloud, although the NAB remains the “standard” in print.
In addition, both versions of the Jerusalem Bible are accepted in the U.S. In addition, the Oxford Annotated edition of the Revised Standard Version has been published with the Deutero-Canonical/Apocryphal works with a Nihil Obstat and an Imprimatur.
These are only true of the U.S., however. The Catholic bishops of Great Britain, Canada, Australia and other English-speaking countries select their own translations, and it has been quite a while since I looked into what they were using.
I’m not sure I’d say any of the English translations are accurate. According to a rabbi on a local multi-faith radio show, the English translation of the 10 commandments is faulty. It should be “Thou shall not murder”, not “Thou shall not kill”. That is more than a mere semantic difference.
No translation from any one language to another can claim to be 100% accurate, as not only must the words be translated, but the whole cultural and linguistic attitude that goes along with it. These very often are impossible to render into an understandable form - consider the reference to “He hath moved my bowels” in a love poem. For the ancient Hebrews, the gut was the seat of the emotions, but to us modern Greek-influenced westerners, this has no meaning and should rather be translated as “He hath moved my heart”.
The difficulty in translation is whether to err on the side of literal translation (as the King James and Jerusalem Bibles do) or to attempt to capture the intent and meaning of the original by paraphrasing (as The Message and Phillips’ translations attempt to do. Other translations try for a middle ground, sticking to literal unless the meaning is made clearer by re-phrasing (the most popular of these being the New International Version). No biblical translation can be fully understood without a broader reference to the lifestyle and cultural context of both the author and the intended audience.
The problem with the Bible as a work of translation is that many of its followers use the semantics to justify their particular standpoint on an issue - too often without realising that they are reading the original through the filters of SEVERAL translations…