[B-Greek] The value of reading the NT in Modern Greek

vasilis tsialas tsialas78 at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 5 13:23:42 EDT 2008


What is the best translation in modern Greek?

It depends on what someone wants from a translation.

Vamvas translation (1850) keeps many of the Common Greek forms. It's in "kathareuousa", an artificial language never used in vernacular except in official papers. I cannot really say that it is a translation, because what Vamvas did was to substitute the words of Common Greek which were totally unknown the educated readers of his days with modern words or with old words with modern meanings.

The so-called New Testament of the Four Professors (1969) is again in kathareuousa but pretty much closer to the vernacular speech. It is a conservative and literal translation that helps much more the modern reader to understand the text. Because of its being too conservative, it doesn't reavel all current scholarly understanding of the text to the reader. For instance, many things remain hidden to the modern reader behind obsolete syntactical structures with datives and laconic renderings. But it is a translation that can be trusted for being faithful to the original text.

The so-called New Testament of the Six Professors (1985, rev. 1989, rev. 1997) is a totally fresh approach of translation, in really vernacular speech. It is a living, dynamic equivalence translation with many beautiful expressions and renderings that take advantage of the power of the vernacular speech, but on the other side, as it happens with this king of translations, some times it adds things the original text doesn't say, especially for doctrinal reasons in support the Orthodox Church.

Finally the Greek version of New World Translation (1993, rev. 1997) follows closely the pattern of the English one, but it is revised by Greek scholars aside with the original text so that the problems "of the translation of the translation" may be eliminated, as far as this is possible. I believe that it is the best available translation in Modern Greek as regards its accuracy.

There are few other modern translations, but I haven't worked much with them, and I cannot give any opinion.

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