Excerpt from
Choosing a Bible Translation
John J. Pilch
© The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced by any means, without the written permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321.

When a person determines to read and study the Bible seriously, his or her first question usually is: "Which Bible translation is the best one to use or to buy?" The Bible at home may be quite old, perhaps even a family treasure. Many people who begin to read and study such a Bible soon discover that its language is "old fashioned" and the book itself is cumbersome to carry and clumsy to use. What, then, should one look for in a Bible to be used for study purposes?

Two Kinds of Translations
In general, there are two kinds of Bible translations: a word-for-word (literal, or formal correspondence) translation and a meaning-for-meaning (literary, or dynamic equivalence) translation. A song popular many years ago poked fun at the word-for-word or literal translations familiar to anyone who struggled to learn French in high school: "The pen of my aunt is on the table of my uncle." If you knew French, you would have had no difficulty translating this clumsy English sentence back into perfect French