Customer Reviews

TRUTH IN TRANSLATION: Accuracy and Surprising Bias in the Old Testament

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1 star:		(9)

 

 

I bought this book "Truth in Translation" because it has a nearly identical title and identical art work on the cover, to another book "Truth In Translation" though by a David Debuhn, (that I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from) so I thought it was written by a colleague of his or of someone of his caliber.

How Werner and her ARTB publisher can get away with this, is beyond belief and should not be permissible!

Unlike the book by Debuhn, this book is a scam, a shameless advertising plug for the purchase of a new Bible, which coincidentally is published by the same publisher of her book, ARTB Publishing. In fact the Book "Truth in Translation" by this A. Francis Werner, is included in the new Bible it advertises published by ARTB, as an appendage.

Not only is she wrong, in many or most of her assertions, but the claims made by her of revealing "surprising bias" etc. NEVER appear in the book at all!!! What she calls "surprising" is standard and natural, different acceptable expressions that are usual and customary in every day language, used in translating not only the Bible but other works!

For example in Chapter 3 she makes a big "surprising" issue over the word, in Hebrew that is translated into English as both Angel and Messenger and compares two scriptures as translated or version written in several Bibles. (She does this with other NON surprising words, in like manner throughout the book while plugging the new Bible which coincidentally ranks BEST to use accordingly to her, so buy one)----That's it, the shockingly big surprise and bias!!!!

Regarding this same Hebrew word she claims that it should ONLY be translated as messenger and NOT or NEVER angel and blames the use of "angel" on Greek influence among things. She makes the following (incorrect) blanket bold statement, "Any version which inserts the word angels throughout the Old Testament for messengers from God may be leading readers to the wrong assumption that humans have nothing to do with heavenly messages." First, that is NOT what translating "messenger" in place of "angel" or visa versa does!!!

Now, interestingly, to support this "surprising" conclusion she cites (among other scriptures) the account found in Judges 13:9, about a messenger visiting the soon to be parents of Samson, and claims the word should be messenger rather than angel, or one can be misled to think that humans have nothing to do with heavenly messages!!! What does this statement have to do with the price of bananas? Exactly, my point!!!!!

I humbly submit, this issue, as supported by the scripture at Judges 13:9, has nothing to do with supporting the idea that humans have nothing to do with heavenly messages, not to mention that this is completely off the subject matter, (of her own statement) but instead of choosing messenger here in this verse, angel is indeed appropriate (meaning no one can find fault with or surprising bias here) as the account shows in verse 17 and 18 that he messenger did not provide a name, but explains it is a "wonderful-one" and in verse 19, shows this messenger doing something in a "wonderful way" and finally in verse 20 this messenger is shown NOT to be human, as the messenger "ascended into the flame of the altar heavenward" making it crystal clear that it is an spirit creature, angel in the account!!! Therefore any reasonable person (scholar or not) can and would use the word angel in this verse (Greek influenced or not) without compromising the text at all, and for that matter use messenger and it would have the same affect, which has NO effect on "humans having nothing to do with heavenly messages"!!!

As to her discussion and big deal she makes on "missing words" I wish to quote the words of Professor Moises Silva, Ph.D., University of Manchester, formerly Professor of New Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and apply it here, when he states in the book "The Challenge of Bible Translation, Communicating God's Word to the World", of which he served as contributor among many, where he states on page 25, "His personal struggle early on to translate into English all the rich nuances of Spanish, his own first language, convinced him that any "literal" word-for-word translation strategy will prove both impossible and ultimately unhelpful." I couple it with the words on page 22 of that book which states, "Translation is not as straightforward as converting Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius or Roman numerals to regular numbers. Thus, the one of the recurring themes in this volume is that translation is not an exact science. We should take this to mean that the fantasy of a one-for-one mechanical conversion process has finally been exposed for the false it really is."

By way of a simple example of what is expressed above for use in understanding "missing words" and using the simple (as compared to Classical Greek or Ancient Hebrew) known language of today, Spanish, note, that the simple word in English, "courtroom" exactly translates into two words in Spanish, "Corte" [for the first part-court] and "Cuarto" and or "Sitio" [for the second part of the word-room ] however, if you would to express to anyone highly educated or dumb in Spanish today, that they need to go to the "Corte Cuarto" or "Corte Sitio" NO ONE WOULD UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS AT ALL AS IT MAKES NO SENSE!!! Now, the correct dynamic or formal equivalence of the English word "Courtroom" in Spanish is "La Sala Del Tribunal", so one in Spanish could easily understand that they need to go to this place! NOTE: Not only are there "missing-words" not one of the words that this translates to, is match at all to "courtroom" in English! This Werner author is misleading and her readers, who may find her work to actually be more than a shameful plug, advertising piece for a new Bible!

There is an old Latin expression taught in some law schools L1 programs, that I do my best to spell from memory, that applies to this book; uni falti, tutti falti, that roughly translates into, when `one thing is wrong with a document or matter, then the whole document or matter is wrong'!!!

Shameful plug with a poorly written work!!!

Sincerely,

TonyP-Tucson Arizona

Is it ethical to deceive in order to promote a new book or Bible translation?

THIS IS NOT THE REAL BOOK!!! This work's title and book cover plagiarizes almost word for word the original title and cover appearance of the real book by the genuine scholar Mr. Jason David BeDuhn.

THE real book is "TRUTH IN TRANSLATION" Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament by Jason David BeDuhn by University Press of America ISBN 0-76182556-8 paperback edition, or ISBN 0-7618-2555-X clothbound edition, which is, by the way a scholarly respected work of rigorous academics and diligent research.

Is it then really ethical to deceive the public in at first thinking this person's comments have something to do with Mr. Beduhn's work?

Is it really necessary to resort to academic dishonesty, greed and deception in this pathetic world? How sad this person and her publishing house feels compelled to resort to deception to sell her books. I question the value of her material when she has to resort to copying almost word for word the title and the cover art and graphics of another's work, obviously in an effort to deceive and confuse the hapless reader.

Academic ethics and honesty demands she change her title and cover art and graphics immediately with a letter of apology to Mr. Jason David DeBuhn and to us, the public.

At this point I am so disturbed by this deception I find it difficult to consider anything she may have written as having value since she herself has overshadowed her own efforts to sell her book by resorting to dishonesty and plagiarism. To be fair I wanted to learn more about the publishing house ARTB Publishing but the number provided has a recorded message stating it was not a working number. (314-843-8360) Perhaps there is another number?...I do not know.

Since her comments concern Bible usage in translation, I wonder what the AUTHOR of the BOOK of Books thinks of her efforts? Stealing another person's name or coveting another person's property or any form of deception and hypocrisy for whatever reason, is strongly condemned in Sacred Scripture. (Exodus 20:15-17, Psalms 5:4-6; John 4:24; John 7:17-18, and John 17:17 to just name a few important texts.)

I question what has happened here to her love of God and love of Neighbor? (Leviticus 19:18 Matthew 22:36-40) Her conduct brings reproach on honest academic analysis of Scripture. Her conduct strengthens my convictions that the prophetic power of Scripture continues to be fulfilled not only in earlier times but especially now in our day as noted in these few examples (Matthew 7:15-23, Romans 13:10 and again 2nd Timothy chapter3, the entire chapter, but especially verse 13.)

The book is poorly constructed!! Its attempting to coatail jasons very in depth work, without the scholarship. In all honest the author should be ashamed of themselves for the level of blantently un original work, down to even the cover art. SAVE YOUR MONEY- the book boils down to a sales pitch of a poor translation. This is nothing like the original New Testament work it so sadly wants to aspire to. DO NOT BUY! If this work was priced one dollar it would be over priced by about 99 cents for what you get.

Werner's "model" of "Paint (translate) by Numbers" (in this instance Strong's Numbers) is simply unscientific and linguistically flawed. The model is based on warehouse inventory management where shelf items can be categorised and coded on a one-to-one-basis. The notion that translation can be based on a one-to-one basis, i.e., one Hebrew/Greek word to one English word is absurd. In fact, most, if not all Greek verbs, will require at least two, and often more English words to express the person, action, aspect, and mood in English. This is due to the fact that all of these, and other elements, are mostly captured by a single word in Greek/Hebrew, and therefore requires several words in most modern languages to properly express the same thought.
What is particularly distrurbing about the "model" is the so-called "error-rating". This "rating is based purely on the notion of a one-to-one (numerical) relationship between concepts across languages, and translations that attempt to capture the actual sense and meaning of the Hebrew/Greek are penalised by being given a higher "error rating".
For example, early in the book Werner admits that Hebrew (and Greek for that matter) uses the present and past tenses to emphasise an act as 'ongoing' or as 'completed'. We simply do not have the same linguistic mechanism in English and therefore we need to employ several words to accurately capture the sense of 'ongoing' or completed'. Werner's model completely fails to incorporate this element into the "error rating" system. Consequently she calls the NWT "verbose" and "wordy" for using 'additional words' such as "proceeded to", "began ...", went on to ...", etc. The point she misses completely is that these very phrases convey the essential difference between 'ongoing' and 'completed' action - both in Greek and Hebrew.
The NWT is, in fact, one of the very few translations that correctly captures the sense and meaning of this aspect in Hebrew (and Greek). Unfortunately translations which fail to to do so are rated highly on Werner's "paint-by-numbers"-scale. Thus the model rates as 'good' those translations which fail to capture the sense and meaning (aspect), whereas it rates as 'poor' those who actually do so! In many cases the rating is in fact the exact inverse of what literal accuracy really means.
One could continue indefinitely to provide further examples of the 'unscientific' nature of the model, but perhaps the above will suffice.
On a final note, I fully agree with other comments on the unethical nature of piggy-backing' on Jason BeDuhn's scholarly work by copying the title, chapter headings, etc. Werner completely misinterprets BeDuhn's intention with his brief 'numerical analyisis' of Col 1:15-18 which was aimed at showing how some distort the true meaning of this passage by adding invalid additions. BeDuhn was not developing a paint-by-numbers methodology!
BeDuhn's scholarly and objective work merits commendation.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I read through the other 1 star comments and I agree with their statements. I am tossing in my two cents that yes, in fact this book is a joke.

I had the honor of accidently ordering it on amazon when I went from the hardcover web page of Truth In Translation authored by Jason BeDuhn to thinking I clicked on his paperback version. I was so excited to own a copy of my very own written by him that I made the mistake of ordering without even making sure I had the right author because I assumed I went directly to his paperback work.

You could imagine the look on my face when I opened the package...

Yes, I heard from a colleague of mine that Werner's Old Testament version was a joke when he introduced me to BeDuhn's work. In order to give Werner's an honest review, I read her introduction and the first few pages, then quickly skimmed through the rest because it became very apparent that this is not a scholarly book. It reads like a high school student whipped up this project at 4 A.M. because it was due the following morning.

The seller, richardandlydiapf, was kind enough to accept me sending the book back because I erred. Otherwise it would have been thrown into Gehenna...

Looks like the real thing, tries to piggy-back as the real thing- but it turns in to a jumble of weird- unimportant details- masquerading-as if important details. After reading the real "Truth in Translation" this book is real junk food, a big distraction in an otherwise very important topic Save yourself the money.

Looks like the real thing but I was Very Disappointed Please buy the real "Truth in Translation"

Although they try to get to the actual root words of the translation, they leave no room for the English language to have expression. Ancient Hebrew people were able to distinguish the difference in the word reference as in father meaning father, chieftan or tribal leader. If you only use the actual meaning for the word, how could we know the difference in reference of God, angel or one who represented him since they all use the same root word? I agree that many liberties have been taken in translation and many will twist the translation to fit their ideas, wanting it to conform to what they believe it should say but, unfortunately, most scholars when attacking a problem ,come in with preconceived ideas and start from there instead of being truly unbiased. Trinitarians start with that idea and go from there, monotheism does the same. The biggest problem we deal with is that the original language and meaning is based on how WE TODAY can interpret it. A scholar is not a know all, infallible person nor is a group of them. When you actually look up the meaning of the word scholar, in its simplest form it means a person who can read and write. And a majority rule is not always the right answer. Jesus' teaching was not what the majority believed or taught because he got away from the traditions that were added by man. It is good that this book wants to do that but, it left me a little flat when they started promoting their version as the best.

My wife ordered Werner's counterfiet for me because I couldn't say enough about Dr. BeDuhn's Book. Like some of you, she thought it was a series or continuation of the original. Very clever cover!
It doesn't take very much effort to recognize the whole production is a scam to sell her "new Bible" ARTB. I find it very interesting that her bio includes Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales for a "major" Fortune 500 company, but nowhere does it mention any studies of "ancient" languages, or theocratic training!
Please don't listen to the multiple star reviews. These people are blindly ignorant and do not understand the truth about the bible.
As someone already said, "it doesn't deserve one star" but I can't get below it!

It is sad that the author cannot create an original title and cover for this book. This is not the original "truth in translation" that so beautifully examines the top translations of the bible today and explains why several are outstanding in their translation accuracy. It doesn't even deserve ONE STAR, but the site doesn't allow you to give no stars, which it deserves. Don't waste your time on this one!

The author has refered to Jason David BeDuhn's THRTH IN TRANSLATION: ACCURACY AND BIAS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT as though she was going to do the same type of analysis with the "Old Testament", Hebrew Scriptures. BeDuhn's book was a book of substance by an author who knew what it means to translate from one language to another and accomplish the task of conveying to the readers the thoughts of the bible writer. I could not find any inaccuracys revealed because of the translater's desire to portray his belief. Her idea of bias is whether or not the translater used only the hebrew text. She calls it "translinear". Most English readers of the bible want to know what the bible writer's thoughts are and information he is conveying. We don't speak Hebrew, think Hebrew, or have our roots in Hebrew. Ms. A. Frances Werner should never potray herself as an expert of the Hebrew Scriptures of the bible. As an expert in Sales and Marketing maybe, but, I don't appreciate being deceived into paying $44 for her book. Her Sales and Marketing skills are obvious in this book to sell her translinear ANCIENT ROOTS TRANSLINEAR BIBLE (ARTB). But, as for me, she can ring up a "NO SALE"!!!