The Bible Scale
No translation is neutral. Every translator chooses, again and again, between following the words of the original and rendering the thought in ordinary language. This scale sets the best-known translations of each language on a single arc, from word for word to sense for sense, so you can see roughly where the Bible you read stands — and where the translations you can read on this site stand.
How to read it
On the left of the arc are the translations that stay as close as they can to the words, the word order and the sentence structure of the Hebrew and Greek; the reader sometimes has to work a little. On the right are the translations that want to carry the meaning over in natural, present-day language, even where the words of the original have to give way. In the middle are translations that deliberately steer between the two.
The translations in bold can be read on this site, in Moria. Under Dutch, the Nieuwe Statenvertaling — this site’s own translation — is shown in the accent colour. The buttons above the arc switch to another language; tap or click a name and you jump to the line below that says what its translators intended.
Left is not better than right. A literal translation shows more of the original but asks more of the reader; a communicative one reads more easily but has already decided more for you. For close study the left-hand side is the more useful — and you see most when you lay two translations from different sides next to each other.
Where the positions come from
From an estimate, not a measurement. There is no yardstick that puts literalness into a number, and no source gives a place on this scale itself. What there is: what the publisher or the translators say about their approach — formal or dynamic equivalence, word for word or thought for thought, and whom the translation is for — and what reference works write about it. The order was chosen on that basis. The exact distance between two translations means little.
Where the source does not state the approach in so many words, the translation is marked less certain. Its place is then inferred from other clues — the history of the translation, the version it goes back to, or a sample — and it may be well off. Nor are the languages calibrated against each other: two translations at the same height in German and in Japanese are not thereby shown to be equally literal.
Sources
Below the arc, each translation has a short line on its translation approach, with a link to the source: usually the publisher or the Bible society itself, otherwise a reference work or a survey article. The year is that of the first complete edition; later revisions follow it. If you see a position you think is wrong, or a source that puts it better, please let me know through the contact page.