Previous posts in this series: Bible Version Cage-Match Round 1, Bible Version Cage-Match Round 2, The Scam Is Revealed

In this series, Rick Mansfield and I have been trading posts talking about the relative strengths of the New Living Translation and the Contemporary English Version.  We’ve said from the beginning that these are both great translations.  What we want to do through this series, hopefully in an entertaining way, is bring these two translations before a wider audience.  My most recent post was a rather strange departure from the series and a bit of a debacle.  In The Scam Is Revealed, I talked about how in preparing for Round 3 I found myself criticizing other translations in the process of showing off a translation I liked.  In this post, you’ll see that I’ve tried to avoid that “scam.” 

Without further ado, let’s bring our challengers into the ring and begin Round 3.

Does that sound right to you?

The first thing I want to consider is how CEV and NLT sound.  My particular concern is with how these Bibles sound when they are read aloud.  For example, when you read a passage to your children at bedtime, can they understand it easily?  If the translation uses unfamiliar expressions or awkward English, you are quickly going to lose your kids’ attention.  Another situation is public reading of the Scriptures in church.  When the Scriptures are read on a Sunday can everyone listening follow along?  Does the English sound archaic or awkward?  Does it use difficult theological terms that aren’t used in modern English?

Listen to a recording of 2 Corinthians 3 by clicking on the link below.  When you click on the link, it should start playing in a media player such as Real Player or Windows Media Player.

• Listen to 2 Corinthians 3 (CEV)

If that doesn’t work for you, click on this link and read 2 Corinthians 3 out loud:

• Read 2 Corinthians 3 (CEV)
• Read 2 Corinthians 3 (NLT)

What I notice most as I listen is how the language flows so smoothly.  The language is simple and clear and the passage has cohesion, meaning that the all the verses fit together into a single text rather than sounding like a disjointed collection of unrelated verses. 

While both versions read out loud very nicely, there are a couple of infelicities in the NLT.  Let’s look at a few examples from 2 Corinthians 3.

• Verse 4: We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ.

This sounds a bit strange and leads to ambiguity.  What does it mean to “trust in God through Christ?”  In English, the word through is an adverb with many uses.

Warning: Greek ahead! Feel free to skip this paragraph!

Through Christ is translating the expression διὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ which is the preposition διὰ followed by the the genitive noun τοῦ Χριστοῦ. In general, διὰ followed by a genitive noun is an adverbial phrase of means.  The other common adverbial phrase using διὰ is when it precedes the accusative and indicates benefit.

Start reading again here…

A clearer translation of this phrase would be, “We trust in God by means of Christ” or “We trust in God because of Christ.”

• Verse 9: new covenant

This is a slight quibble but the word covenant is not Standard English.  You could argue that the word agreement doesn’t capture all the nuances of the Biblical concept here, but at least it is clearly understood. Are there any uses of the word covenant that refer to modern practices?

• Verse 14: the people’s minds were hardened

Sorry, folks, but nobody in any dialect of English that I know of says that people’s minds are hardened.  You can be hard-headed.  You can be stiff-necked.  You can stubbornly refuse to believe something.  But you can’t have your mind hardened.

Going with the information flow

Much work has been done in both versions to make sure that readers and hearers are not overloaded with information.  The technical term for this is information rate meaning “the rate at which new information is given in a text.”

Here are the first three verses in CEV:

Are we once again bragging about ourselves? Do we need letters to you or from you to tell others about us? Some people do need letters that tell about them. 2 But you are our letter, and you are in our hearts for everyone to read and understand. 3  You are like a letter written by Christ and delivered by us. But you are not written with pen and ink or on tablets made of stone. You are written in our hearts by the Spirit of the living God.

(2 Cor. 3:1-3, CEV)

One way that the information rate is slowed down in this passage is through breaking it up into smaller sentences.  While it isn’t always possible to state exactly how many “sentences” are in a particular passage in the New Testament Greek, it is fairly clear in this case that there are three sentences: two questions in verse 1 and a long sentence in verses 2 and 3.  Those three sentences have been rendered by the CEV and NLT as seven English sentences.

Some critics have erroneously asserted that when translators break up a passage into smaller sentences they are destroying the internal structure of the argument found in the original.  While that is possible, it is not necessarily the case.  Instead, by breaking up long passages into smaller chunks we can often improve comprehension by slowing down the information rate.

Compare the CEV translation above to my ”essentially literal” translation of the passage:

Do we begin to commend ourselves again? Surely we don’t need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You are our letter, having been written in our hearts, known and read by all men, and it is apparent that you are a letter from Christ having been cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human flesh.

(2 Cor. 3:1-3, Lingamish)

 Can you see how presenting all that information in a few sentences makes it hard to understand? There are a couple of other aspects of my translation that make it difficult to understand:

1. My translation uses more “elevated” vocabulary for example commend vs. bragging about.
2. My translation uses a lot of parenthetical asides: as some do, having been written in our hearts, known and read by all men. The effect of these parentheticals is that they interrupt the flow of the information.

Amazing tricks that you can perform in the comfort of your own home

Before we leave the subject of information rate I want to show you a neat trick that you can do if you have a copy of Microsoft Word.  Under Tools-Opti
ons-Spelling & Grammar, enable “Show Readability Statistics.” Now when you check the spelling on your document, you will get a summary at the end showing “Readability Statistics.”  The Averages section will show you things like characters per word and words per sentence.  In terms of information rate, texts with shorter words tend to be easier to understand (because longer words in most cases are more technical).  And texts with shorter sentences also tend to be easier to understand.

The Readability section is based on some formulas called The Flesch Reading Score and The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score.  These shouldn’t be taken as absolute proof of a text’s readability but they can give you a general idea. When you cut and paste a Biblical text into Word and then check the spelling you will be able to check the readability statistics for that version.

Here are the results for 2 Corinthians 3:1-3 for CEV, NLT and my translation:

(I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know how to do tables!)

Flesch Reading Score:
Note: 100 possible, higher score equals higher readability.
86.5 (CEV), 78 (NLT), 70.8 (Lingamish)

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score:
Note: The score rates a text according to the U.S. system of grade levels.
4.3 (CEV), 5.9 (NLT), 9.8 (Lingamish)

These statistics match up with my basic intuition of these three translations.  For comparison’s sake, the paragraph I wrote above beginning with “Before we leave the subject” ranks 56.1 on the reading score with a 9.8 grade level.  Looks like I could use some work on making my prose more readable!

How smart is your translation?

What grade level is best for a Bible translation?  I am in complete agreement with someone who wants a translation that uses rich vocabulary and complex syntax to try to capture all the richness of the original text.  But when we are looking for a translation that will often be read out loud we need to consider using a Bible with a much lower grade level.  Why is that? When you are reading, you can control the flow of the information by stopping and re-reading a verse. But a listener has only one chance to understand what is being read.  That’s why spoken English tends to have much shorter sentences and more repetition than written English. 

So if you are a church board trying to decide on a pew Bible, or you are simply a mom or dad wanting a Bible to read out loud to your children, a Bible with a fourth-grade reading level is not such a dumb idea.

The winner of Round 3

Based on the read-aloud and the readability scores, Round 3 goes to the CEV.