One recent Blog reviewer of the Transparent English Bible translation sample was lamenting that it was choppy and difficult to read, especially aloud. Here are his comments:

…if an important quality of a good English translation involves being able to be read aloud, then this may be the TEB’s Achilles heel. Scripture has only been the object of personal, silent reading in relatively recent times. In synagogue and church the Bible has always been read aloud, reflecting the reality of our largely illiterate forebears. Arguably these books were written to be read aloud rather than pored over by individuals – that’s how it was supposed to happen when they were first set down. By this criteria TEB looks shaky. Try rolling this text off the tongue:

These are the bringings-forth of the skies and the land in their being created. In the day of the making of YHVH ELOHIM, land and skies, and no shrub of the field was before that on the land, and no plant of the field had before that sprouted – for YHVH ELOHIM had not made rain on the land, and there was no soil-man to service the soil (2: 4-5)

This may be true to the Hebrew, but it’s not the way lucid English works.

I found this comment particularly interesting since I had just written in my previous post that one of the most valued features of the TEB is in fact its unusual cadence and rhythm, and that one could only appreciate this by reading it aloud! Even though the example this reviewer chose is one place where they Hebrew is actually “run on” making it more difficult to follow, I maintain it can indeed be read aloud, even in the case of a more difficult example like this, with a resulting beauty and power that is unavailable in “lucid English.” The rhythm of the TEB is often staccato and choppy, awkward rather than smooth, with exclamations and disjunctives. One might call it primitive but that assumes that lucid, polished English is the best way to communicate. In fact, part of the choppiness comes from the underlying “oral” nature of the original. I challenge readers to give it a try. One might stumble at first, but it is a stumbling that comes from unfamiliarity. One has to actually “warm up” to the process. I have tried it in classes and in groups and the effect has been quite amazing. Another striking feature of the original Hebrew, brought out consistently in the TEB, are the plays on words and colorful idioms, often completely missing in most standard English translations. These work well when read aloud. They seem to reflect a flavor of the original, much like listening to different regional styles of English can convey a certain flavor. Think of what Mark Twain tried to pick up on with Huck Finn or Faulkner with his various southern characters. Just as an example, try reading aloud the cry of Cain over his pronounced exile:

And Cain said toward YHVH, “Large is my crookedness  from  being lifted.  Look!—you have driven me out, today, from upon the face of the soil, and from your face I will be hidden, and I will be one moving to-and-fro, and one fluttering in the land, and it will be—everyone finding me will kill me.

Nonsense is nonsense and there are places in the Hebrew Bible where we must attempt a bit of smoothing out, or where an idiom does not come over in English, so we use a footnote to explain the more “literal, or even places where one has no idea what the original means. Still, our method and approach with the TEB is to work with and reflect as closely as possible the contours of the original.

Happy reading…