by Wonderment 13 Replies latest watchtower bible
I doubt that the JW translators were proficient in the original Biblical languages Hebrew and Greek. Which leads me to believe that they merely translated the American-English version of the NWT into these 13 languages.
So instead of a real Bible translation as they claim, the Watchtower is actually publishing a translation of their English version Bible into these languages.
merely translated the American-English version of the NWT into these 13 languages.
This inspired me to look at one of the existing versions of the NWT, I picked the Zulu language as one not too obscure.
Just running it through Google Translate, I was not expecting to see this at John 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I checked Tagalog and Welsh, and they do seem to have the doctrinal '...a god'.
A glitch in Google Translate, or a glitch in the Zulu translation committee?
By the way, the Welsh translation hub, or whatever they call it, is an impressive property.
Athanasius: "So instead of a real Bible translation as they claim, the Watchtower is actually publishing a translation of their English version Bible into these languages."
For the most part this is true. However, The WT claim that these other translations are based on the English Version, but referencing the Original languages appear to be also true, at least with the major languages. The few times I have checked various NWT vernacular versions (i.e., French, Modern Greek, Italian, Portuguese & Spanish) in the past, I have found various readings in these that are not English equivalents per se. In other words, these translations are adaptations of the English to the target languages, and some of the final readings may actually turn out to be closer to the original languages than the English source.
Furthermore, English versions (like Good News Bible, Living Bible, NIV, etc.), when translated into other languages, may not be, for the most part, fresh translations in the full sense either, for they depend heavily on the English versions they are sourced from. We cannot expect that each of these vernacular versions are to be translated verse-by-verse from scratch from the original source by a group of translators with a different criteria. To do so would be more costly, and time-consuming. To reach the uniformity the publishers seek, the academic translators are more likely to use the English source as a guide, and make adaptations from the original languages to the local needs as they go along. Remember, making sounding claims is one thing, but what they do in practice is another matter.
