"Daughter of Zion" but Zion IS the daughter. "Daughter Zion"
"Blessed is the one... who does not stand in the way of sinners" ("ie, the way sinners do things, not standing in front of them to block them")
- ESV - "Understandable English"
- NIV - "Natural English"
- NLT - "Easy English"
Metaphors
Live vs. Dead metaphors. Do you continue to use the metaphor, or do you substitute the word for the idea.
Examples:
- "Cut off" meaning "destroy"
- "walk" meaning "live," "direct one's life"
- "sleep" meaning "die" (Not enough evidence that this is a dead metaphor. So using 'sleep 'in death' may help.)
The difficulty of the varieties of English used today
This gives some license for the translator to use different expressions to translate the same underlying word.
Wez: But surely you should try to preserve the same rendering for a word within the same author?
Doug: Well, not so much just within the one author, but where we think the author is trying to make a link between the two usages.
Gender: Third Person Singular Generics
A problem not of understanding the Greek, but of understanding the English that you're translating into.
ESV keeps third-singular forms
Luke 9:23 - "And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross..." (over 'literal' assumptions?)
NLT moves to second-person forms
"Then he said to the crowd, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must ..." (but what do you lose here?)
CEB uses plurals
"All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross ..."
NIV often uses the so-called 'singular' they
"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross ..."
But, is that correct English?
NIV commissioned a study by the Collins Dictionaries, who own the Bank of English. (4.4 billion words)
Problem, then, is the different 'idiolects' that you find all over the world. What English are you translating into?
The database primarily filled the blank in "Every citizen was sent a ballot so that ____ could vote" with "they". This then is used as a snapshot of spoken English around the world. So the question is whether the lack of masculine focus in the original that would be present in the English by using 'his' is actually helpful.