When Eternal isn't Forever

Why Translation Is So Hard, and Why It Matters for How We Read the Bible

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Translation is hard work. Very rarely does one word in one language map perfectly onto a word in another language. What we usually have instead are semantic ranges. Think of a Venn diagram, where the meaning of a word in one language overlaps with the meaning of a word in another. The task of translation is to find the word where that overlap is as close or as specific to particular context as possible.

This means that in one context, a word might best be translated one way in English, but in another context, a different English word might better convey that same original term. All of this explains why translating something like the Bible into English is incredibly difficult. I have a great deal of respect for the scholars who work on any of the major Bible translations.

That said, one of my biggest pet peeves is when English translations choose one English word for a term in one verse and then choose a different English word for the same term in the same passage, even when it is very clear that the Greek or Hebrew is intentionally linking those ideas together. 

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