Featured Col. 1 in the NLT

Since the NLT came up on another thread, and I have never read it, I thought I would do a comparison of it with the Greek (Byz. textform Greek text). You are quite welcome to disagree. I'll give a verse by verse comparison for Col. 1:1-10. I don't have hard copy, so I'm taking it from here: Colossians 1 - New Living Translation (NLT) | Biblica

First of all, v. 1.

1 This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy.
1 Παῦλος ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ, καὶ Τιμόθεος ὁ ἀδελφός,

I have underlines places in v. 1 where the NLT adds data. First of all, the Greek does not say "This letter is from..." The NLT adds that, I suppose, to make sure people know it's a letter--as if the reader couldn't figure that out for itself. Wikipedia says that the translators used a "dynamic equivalence synergy approach," whatever that is (not that I trust Wikipedia). Can anyone tell me if the translators consciously used DE? The original Living Bible was not DE, but a paraphrase (and sometimes a pretty bad one).

Again, "chosen" is not in the original, which has simply "Paul, an apostle through (or by) the will of God. This is a more serious addition to me, because it distracts from the phrase "will of God" to another thought, "chosen." Of course Paul was chosen to be an apostle. But Paul never uses that term in relation to his apostleship. He reserves it for salvation. If I were going to add a word here, it would be "called," not "chosen," since that is how Paul referred to his apostleship in other passages.

Another added datum is "our" towards the end. I don't see a problem semantically here, but once again, there is no need for the addition. The average (or even below average reader) can figure it out.

 

Thank you. This is helpful--but a little muddled if you ask me. How do you say about a translation method that it "yielded archaic or foreign words"?

 

Here is v. 2:

2 We are writing to God’s holy people in the city of Colosse, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace.
2 τοῖς ἐν Κολασσαῖς ἁγίοις καὶ πιστοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ἐν χριστῷ· χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ.

Up front, in case you are reading the Greek, there is a textual difference here: UBS 4 leaves out "and our Lord Jesus Christ."

Extraneous data in this verse includes "and sisters," and "May...." We talked already about the "and sisters" addition on the other thread, so I'll not belabor it here. The word "may" makes us think that there is a Greek subjunctive here, but there is not. The usual translation would be, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father." This is completely understandable by any English-speaking person, so there was no need to add "May...give you." News programs use a similar syntax: "Breaking news to you from New York." Toasts and similar "blessings" in English use this syntax. This is a clear case of overreach in the name of clarity.

 

Here is one more verse from the NLT.

3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Εὐχαριστοῦμεν τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρὶ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ, πάντοτε περὶ ὑμῶν προσευχόμενοι,

I have no real objection to this rendering except for no understandable reason the order of the phrases is altered.

 

Very poor so far.

 

Here we go:

4 For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, (Why not “holy people” as in v.
4 ἀκούσαντες τὴν πίστιν ὑμῶν ἐν χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, καὶ τὴν ἀγάπην τὴν εἰς πάντας τοὺς ἁγίους,

This is a fairly straight rendering, except for one thing. Compare ἁγίοις (dative case, saints), "God's holy people"in v. 2, to ἁγίους (accusative), "God's people" here. In the exact same word (only different in case) in the context of only 2 verses later, they have changed the rendering. So, God's people in v. 2 are holy, but they are not here. Wow, what a weird translation! To these Greek experts, the word changed in meaning in the same context, and God's people became unholy, apparently.

 

To show you how ridiculous this statement from the NLT intro is, today I am grading a translation project on the book of Mark by a student. This student rendered Mark 1:43 with "charged...with earnest admonition," since the student felt that "straitly charged" was archaic, even though the student used a literal method! So, do literal methods "yield archaic or foreign words"? It is to laugh. (I could give numerous other examples.)

So, what is it that produces archaic words in a modern translation? It is familiarity with an older or classical version. Archaic terms appear in a modern translation of English only if the translator has done a lot of memory work in the KJV. I've seen this over and over in my classes. In Japanese, my co-translator Uncle Miya often went with classical Japanese renderings because (wait for it)--he loved the classical Japanese Bible!!

 

5 which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.
5 διὰ τὴν ἐλπίδα τὴν ἀποκειμένην ὑμῖν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, ἣν προηκούσατε ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀληθείας τοῦ εὐαγγελίου,

Now we have an antecedent problem. This verse is phrased oddly. What does the "which come" refer to here in v. 4, faith and love, or "God's people"? Syntactically it could refer to either, but the original phrases it quite differently. The preposition διὰ plus the accusative is used to give a reason, as any first year textbook will teach: "because of" or "on account of" are the usual glosses. Translating "because of" instead of "which come from"

It is clear that this verse is a complete paraphrase: "confident hope" instead of just "hope," "what God has reserved for you in heaven" instead of "reserved for you in the heavens," and "You have had this expectation" instead of "which you heard about." As a couple of my favorite secular scholars say:

“Paraphrase falls short of maintaining a semantic correspondence and is actually transformative.” Lawrence Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed., p. 18.

“Highly paraphrastic translations result from a theory of interlingual communication which justifies the addition of extraneous material or the need to ‘improve’ on the original by rewriting it.” On Translation, by Jin Di and Eugene Nida, p. 8.