Featured Is there really an Optimal Translation theory?

There are two English translations that claim to use OE, the NKJV and the HCSB (I don't yet have a CSB). The OT editor of both is the above-mentioned James Price. To claim OE being used in any other translation is to misunderstand what exactly a translation method is and how it rules the translator's choices. This viewpoint can easily become anachronization, putting modern thinking back into historical translations (as when someone claims the KJV uses DE).

 

True.

 

In my view there is no such thing as "formal translation theory," though you might say "a formal translation theory," meaning one theory out of several that look for formal equivalence. Nida gave a supercilious definition: "formal correspondence: quality of a translation in which the features of the form of the source text have been mechanically reproduced in the receptor language" (Nida and Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, p. 200).

There are various levels of formal (or literal), which I would represent by: interlinear, Young's, NASB & ESV, NKJV & Holman's.

 

But an interlinear keeps the form of the original, just as defined by Nida and Taber.

Unfortunately, quite often a good literal method is depicted as being interlinear. For example, D. A. Carson characterized as "literal" an interlinear translation of the German "Haben Sie nichts gefunden?" as translated by "Have you nothing found?" (The King James Version Debate, p. 90). As much as I respect Carson, this is not the typical literal translation, but interlinear. He is setting up a straw man argument, not worthy of his usual scholarship.

 

These these?

 

Point of grammar : It's know, not "knows" in the context of what you were trying to say.

 

That's pure nonsense. One can't translate verbatim. That's silly.

 

By the way, I had Spiro's daughter, Susan, as a 7th grade history teacher.

 

You are being silly. Just about every translation claims to translate in the best way possible --optimally.
One can't just push a program button of O.E. and maintain it is totally unique to two or possibly three translations. That's absurd.

Again, there is nothing new under the sun. Tyndale and the KJV revisers used the principle of dynamic equivalence.
That particular term wasn't used --but the principle certainly was employed. You'd have to be blind (or deaf --if visually impaired) to miss the obvious.

 

You have used it yourself when referencing the 1977 NASB.

 

But I'm sure the translators have a steely gaze when they translate.

 

I never thought that the 1995 NASB was wooden.

You are off the deep end.

 

"Functional equivalents are not new. Although the translation theory which formally defines such differences is of recent origin, the technique did not originate in the late twentieth century. Fuinctional equivalent translation is found in the Septuagint and the venerable KJV also used functional equivalents in many instances."( Rodney Decker Verbal-Plenary Inspiration And Translation.)

 

Whenever possible = rarely.