NIV Translator Speaks of Finding the Right Words

Douglas Moo says translators of the best-selling New International Version of the Bible are increasingly relying on a large computerized database of English-language usage as they go about their doing work.

“There is a rapid advance in linguistic computing power to give us a sense of how people around the world are speaking English today,” said Moo, chair of the NIV’s Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), in a recent presentation at Calvin Theological Seminary.

“In our work, we don’t contrive meaning, we only describe it, using English that people are actually using today.”

Moo, a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School, spoke at Calvin Seminary as part of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the NIV.

Commissioned in 1965 at a meeting of evangelical scholars in Chicago, the NIV came out in a New Testament version in 1973 and the full Bible in 1978.

Since its release, the NIV has has become the world’s most read modern-English translation of the Bible with more than 500 million copies distributed worldwide.

"Love it or hate it, the NIV has been amazingly successful in helping people across the world know God and his purposes,” said Moo.

At the beginning of his presentation, Moo said the Christian Reformed Church and the seminary played a crucial role in creation of the NIV.

A CRC layman first came up with the idea of having the Bible translated into modern English. The CRC synod then ultimately approved translating the Bible and sought the help of evangelical scholars from many denominations to help.

“There is no more appropriate place to celebrate the anniversary than Calvin Seminary. The NIV was conceived by the CRC and and seminary, and several seminary professors gave it birth,” he said.

Moo said the 15-member Committee on Bible Translation meets every year to go over suggested changes to the text of the NIV. Very few changes make it through the committee.

Michael Williams, an Old Testament professor at Calvin Seminary, is secretary of the committee. He gave a reflection on the NIV as part of a chapel service that was included in the anniversary celebration.

Moo said that CBT, in searching for the right words and phrases, is always working to make the text understandable to people, which is getting more difficult as the level of people’s ability to read drops

“I tell you nothing you don’t already know when I say fewer and fewer American adults can read effectively,” said Moo. “A 2013 study concluded that fewer than 35 percent of adults in the U.S. can read at all or read below the fifth-grade level.”

This means translators must continue to comb the database of some 4.4 billion words and the latest in biblical scholarship to find the best and closest meaning for words, phrases and clauses in the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts.

“Every translation committee struggles to keep in balance the the sometimes esoteric details of the text with the need to communicate to modern English readers, with the translations leaning  to one side of the other,” said Moo.

In  the case of the NIV, he said, that means using English that is true to the texts and that “new converts can understand and preachers can use as a solid platform for biblical exposition.”

By relying on the linguistic database that contains more than 4.4 billion words, they were able to to determine, for example, that “man,” “mankind,” and “humanity” are the most common ways people today refer to the human race, said Moo.

Moo also used an example of how they have translated Mark 8:36a, comparing what it says in the King James Version to what they have done with the NIV.

The King James reads, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

In the NIV, it says, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” He pointed out that the computerized data shows that people these days often mix the singular “someone” with the plural “their.”

Moo especially stressed the significance that meaning resides in clusters of words and phrases, not in a literal word-for-word translation.

“We can’t ignore the basic principles of how language works,” he said.

“CBT labors over every single word in the original texts, working hard to determine how each of those words contributes to what the text is saying. But what we translate are not those individual words but the meaning they convey in their combination.”