OET Readers’ Version

The Readers’ Version speaks like people around you. Because the history and legacy of English Bibles now goes back for hundreds of years, many things have been carried over that readers don’t even realise. For example, we all smile at Yoda saying, “Strong is the force.” That’s because naturally we would say, “The force is strong.” So think about “Great is your faithfulness.” (At least Miles Coverdale improved it in 1535 if you look carefully.) But our aim isn’t at all to criticise those who came before (because we very-much build on their shoulders)—we just want our readers to be able to share the Good News of Jesus the messiah with others, without them thinking that Christians speak like dinosaurs (or Yoda)!
The Readers’ Version has section headings and cross-references and most of the other features that help modern Bible readers.
The Readers’ Version uses modern units for all measurements (easy to understand and visualise).
The Readers’ Version keeps well-known figures of speech, but if the original figure of speech is not readily understandable, it explains the point that the author appears to be trying to express.
The Readers’ Version might insert modern English figures of speech, e.g., “My kinsmen stand afar off,” might become “My relatives keep their distance,” i.e., using a modern idiom.
Up and down in the original languages (and thus in the Literal Version) refer to uphill and downhill. However, in the Readers’ Version, up and down are used to refer to north and south respectively as per our modern norm.
The Readers’ Version is less formal than most modern English Bible translations, for example, we would use contracted words like we’ll and didn’t, especially when it’s in direct speech. (Always remember that the Bible was written in the languages of the common people.)
The Readers’ Version is less wordy than some English Bible translations, because we don’t always need to translate all the words, e.g., something like ‘And all the assembly of the sons of Israel departed from the land of Egypt’ might become ‘Then all the Israelis left Egypt’ as well as removing unnecessary duplicated phrases like in Exo 18:10. (Always remember that the Readers’ Version is for Bible readers, and the Literal Version is right there for those who’re wanting to get in and study the text.)
The Readers’ Version uses section headings which are very helpful to skim through when trying to locate a certain passage. However, you’ll quickly notice that they are formatted in such a way as not to break the flow of the letter or narrative. This is to visually help the reader to appreciate the full context of the part they’re reading, and not to ignore the connections with what came before and what follows.
We’ve also tried to focus our section headings on principles that are being taught, rather than just focusing on the events happening at the time.
We provide a list of these section headings that you can quickly skim through (including extra, alternative headings) to help you find what you’re looking for.
Being a 21^st century translation done in an era when there is much more effort in general to respect speakers of other languages (including the languages of ethnic minorities in our own countries) and to pronounce their names and placenames correctly, the OET attempts to show greater respect for Biblical names and placenames.
In addition to wanting to get names and placenames more accurate, we’ve also attempted to modernise and simplify the spelling (transliterations) of these names to make it easier for readers to pronounce them as they come across them, e.g., using f instead of ph, so Epafras instead of Epaphras.
With regular words, we’ve tried to do the opposite, i.e., to use less Greek rather than more wherever possible. So a word like apostle (which is an adapted transliteration of the Greek verb meaning ‘one sent out’), actually gets translated, so this example becomes missionary in many places.
Italics are only used for emphasis, not to indicate added words as historically done in older translations due to limitations of the ancient printing processes. (The OET fixes the problem where most modern printing uses italics for emphasis whereas older Bibles use italics for the words which should actually be deemphasised, i.e., the words which actually aren’t in the original manuscripts!)
The English word Christ is an adapted transliteration of the Koine Greek word Kristos used for the original Hebrew messiah. (It’s not Jesus’ surname!) It seems to make sense to only use one word consistently rather than using two words for the same thing (just because they came from two different languages), so the OET has elected to only use messiah.

Our ‘non-literalness’ principle

Many so-called Bible ‘translations’ pride themselves on how ‘literal’ they are. After many decades of learning and studying languages (linguistics), we believe that a principle of translating ‘one word in the source language into one word in the target language’, is a principle of ‘non-translation’ (and most so-called ‘literal’ Bibles don’t actually do it consistently despite their claim on the cover). A good ‘translation’ must translate the intended meaning of the author into the appropriate words in the target language. (Of course, a word-for-word correspondence is an excellent tool for serious students of a text in another language, and we use it for the German and Latin on our parallel verse pages, but it shouldn’t be considered as a ‘translation’ for mainstream readers.)

Most words have a range of meaning, e.g., ‘cold’, ‘warm’, or ‘hot’ each refer to a range of temperatures. So too with verbs, ‘hit’, ‘beat’, ‘bash’, and ‘flatten’ might each refer to striking a dog with a stick (or with a car) with various ranges of force. When translating words from other languages, some parts of a word’s range of meaning might require quite different words in the destination language.

Note: In the OET Literal Version (intended as a study tool), range of meaning is often shown by displaying the possible different English translations of the word separated by a forward slash (but we don’t want kind of distraction in the Readers’ Version).

All to say that the OET Readers’ Version has a deliberate non-literal policy, i.e., if the identical Hebrew/Greek word is used two or more times in the same passage, we will consider if we can use different English synonyms to translate that word each time in order to try to demonstrate the range of meaning of that original word. (You may also recall that your English teacher at school encouraged you to use synonyms when writing, to make it more interesting for the reader, rather than just repeating the same word.)

Example

Let’s give an example from Ecclessiastes 1:2:

You can see from our Literal Version that the same Hebrew word (הָבֶל) is used five times—three times in the singular and twice in the plural:
Futility_of futilities teacher he_said futility_of futilities the_all (is) futility.

Note: If you click on that final word ‘futility’ at that link it will take you to a word page. Then on that word page, click on the Hebrew lemma (word root) and it will take you to that lemma page where you can see all the ways that that root word is translated in our Literal Version.

The KJB-1769 had:
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

NET has:
“Futile! Futile!” laments the Teacher, “Absolutely futile! Everything is futile!”
with a very long and quite technical footnote about the possible meanings of the word translated ‘futile’ here and suggesting other synonyms such as ‘breath’, ‘wind’, ‘profitless’, ‘fruitless’, ‘worthless’, and ‘pointless’, as well as mentioning connotations like ‘transitory’ and ‘fleeting’.

BSB is very similar:
“Futility* of futilities,” says the Teacher, “futility of futilities! Everything is futile!”
with the footnote: Literally vapor or breath; the Hebrew words translated in Ecclesiastes as forms of futile or fleeting can also be translated as vanity or meaningless.

Our Readers’ Version has:
“Totally pointless,” says the leader. “A complete waste of time. Everything’s worthless.”
Here you can see a fairly extreme case of where we used different synonyms in an attempt to alert the English reader to some of the possible range of meanings of that original Hebrew word.

Note: Remember that the OET has our (very) Literal Version right there beside our Readers’ Version so that the serious student can also look across to that word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew text.

Word translation flow-chart

Many words have both a primary meaning and an extended meaning. For example, a ‘butterfly’ might be a certain flying form of an insect, but can also be used to describe part of the ‘choke’ system (also an extended meaning) of a combustion engine. When translating words from other languages, primary meanings and extended meanings might require quite different translations in the destination language.

A word’s collocation describes the other word(s) that appear beside it, e.g., a ‘tall building’ and a ‘tall person’ are both ok, but ‘baby’ would normally be collocated with ‘long’ rather than ‘tall’ (because the baby mostly lies down, rather than stands up). So ‘tall baby’ (for a newborn) is a miscollocation.

Is the word part of an idiom? YES: Go to ‘Idiom translation flow-chart’ below.
Is the accepted literal translation of this word in regular use in modern English with the same meaning as in the Hebrew/Greek? YES: use the English word (or a synonym if required by good English style—note that we can be free to do that because our side-by-side Literal Version always attempts to use exactly the SAME translation every time.)
More coming…

Idiom translation flow-chart

An idiom is a phrase or clause where it might be possible to understand all the words, but the reader would likely still not understand it correctly if they hadn’t come across it previously. A good English example is ‘kick the bucket’ where you might understand what a ‘kick’ involves, and you might know what a ‘bucket’ is, yet you might not be aware that together as a clause, it means ‘to die’. A Hebrew example describes Yahweh as being ‘long of nostril’ which has traditionally been translated as ‘long-suffering’, but more likely as ‘patient’ in a modern translation.

More coming…