| abstract
| - The Bible Retranslation Project recognizes two fundamental aspects of a modern language that causes it to be a constant state of flux or change:
* familiar terms change their meanings, so text using them becomes misinterpretable
* new, more precise terms appear at a rate of about 1000 per year. Terms that were clear and meaningful to one generation are often unclear and less meaningful to the next; meanwhile, entirely new terms are constantly emerging, some of which may facilitate more precise translation from the Biblical Greek and Hebrew (and Aramaic in the case of parts of the books of Ezra/Nehemya and Daniel). Both effects above -- due to culture and the emergence of new terms -- may be increasing as communications increase. If a word inevitably alters its meaning after an approximate number of uses, then the time period for the change in meaning will shorten due to improved technology, just as the length of a sound bite likewise shortens. Likewise, the rate of emergence of new terms may be directly correlated to the frequency of communication. In the internet era, combating the effect of language degradation and creation on the understanding of the Bible becomes more important. But there is an economic obstacle to developing a translation of the Bible that remains current with changes in language. Book sales have been declining sharply due to the internet, and it is probably not easy to recoup the substantial costs ($10 million for the Holman Christian Standard Bible) that are required to develop a new translation. With the need to recoup and enormous investment, publishers of a new Bible are probably overly cautious in changing familiar terminology despite erosion in their meaning, in fear of criticism and a poor reception. A lower-cost and more dynamic approach is needed to combat the effects of persistent degradations in language. As a first step to the Bible Retranslation Project, it is useful to identify modern terms having changing, unclear or altered meaning, which appear in important passages in translations of the Bible into the corresponding modern language. This will help avoid cliché and the repetition of culturally-familiar but suboptimal passages while producing a superior rendition from the original Hebrew and Greek into idiomatic modern English.
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