Readability

Readability refers to how naturally and easily a translation can be read. The more natural are the vocabulary and forms used in a translation the higher it will rank in readability.

There is not a direct correlation between accuracy and readability. One translation may be accurate but not very readable. Another translation may be very readable but not very accurate. Of course it is most desired for a translation to be both accurate and highly readable. For conservative Christians, the NLT probably fills that slot at this time. For a wider audience, the CEV is highly recommended for this slot.

Readability is often ranked for the average population of fluent English speakers of approximately ninth grade reading level. Readability is related to Reading level since it is assumed that older and more educated readers can better understand material written in more complicated forms (which, in themselves, can lower readability).

In the opinion of the editor of this glossary, major recent English Bible versions rank as follows in terms of readability. Within each group below versions appear in descending order of readability:

Most readable:

LB
CEV
NCV
TEV

Highly readable:

NLT
GW
TM
JBP

Stylistically, The Message (TM) is my current favorite version. But its idioms are not always easily accessible to the average target population; a few of its idioms do not seem to be used by very many speakers at all. On the whole, however, it is a delightful version to read. On a scale for impact (which is partly a function of style), I would rank TM the highest. I regard the CEV, NCV, TEV, and GW as stylistically flat, although the CEV is definitely stylistically improved over its predecessor, the TEV. The NLT has some nice style, much of that retained from its predecessor, the LB.

Moderately high level of readability:

NIV

Average readability:

ISV
REB
NJB
NEB

It is not easy to rank the ISV and NIV with reference to each other. The ISV is often more readable than the NIV but in many other places it is far less readable. There are many runon sentences. Adequate discourse cohesion is often missing. Although it does not use too many difficult (to read) theological words, or the elevated vocabulary of the NEB, or the sophisticated idioms of TM, the vocabulary of the ISV is uneven, with quite a number of words not in the typical vocabulary of the average target population.

Below average level of readability:

NRSV
NET
NAB

Moderately low level of readability:

NKJV
NASB

Also see Understandable.

Click here to visit a webpage with helpful information about readability of Bible translations.

Return to Index

Reading level

Reading level refers to an assessment of readability for a particular text. The assessment is based on which grade in the school system is considered to be the appropriate level of education by which a typical student will have achieved that particular level of reading proficiency. Newspapers are typically written for about a 4th grade reading level. The Reader's Digest magazine has a similar reading level.

Various English Bible versions rank differently in terms of reading level because of differences among them with respect to factors such as vocabulary familiarity, sentence length, and difficulty of syntactic constructions. In the "Bible Comparison Guide," distributed by the Zondervan Corporation (publishers of the NIV), the grade reading levels are listed as following for these English versions. (The numbers refer to grade reading level. Hence, 4.8 would indicate a reading level expected to be achieved by a typical student nearing the end of the 4th grade. For the Bible abbreviations used below, see English versions.)

NIV 7.8
NIrV 2.90
KJV 12.00
NKJV 9.0
NLT 6.30
LB 8.33
NASB 11.32
NCV/ICB 3.90
NRSV 10.40
NAB 6.60
TEV 7.29
TM 4.8
CEV 5.4
GW 5.8

[Jan. 27, 2001: We have been informed that the HCSB is ranked at a 6 reading level in its gospel of John.]

The following diagram similarly compares reading levels and includes the translation philosophy used for each Bible version:

This chart is used with permission from Tyndale House Publishers.

Return to Index

Received Text

See Textus Receptus.

Return to Index

Receptor language (RL)

The language into which something is translated. Abbreviated RL. Same as target language.

Return to Index

Regionalism

An expression unique to a particular part of a country. If a translation is to be used by a broad spectrum of a population, it should avoid regionalisms.

For description of some regionalisms in the United States and Canada, visit this website:

Return to Index

Register

Register is a social level of language. A translator has a choice as to which register of a language he translates in. Speakers of languages are sensitive to registers of language and can feel solidarity with people who speak in a register with which they are most familiar, or alienation from one with which they are not. Two possible registers within some cultures would be those of the sophisticated elite and the common working class. Compare Jargon.

Return to Index

Relevance Theory

Relevance Theory (RT) is a relatively new branch of linguistics developed by the British linguists Sperber and Wilson. It focuses on coherence in communication which derives from explicit and implicit information which pertains to a speech situation. Relevance theory builds upon insights in pragmatics. Much of relevance theory promises to be quite relevant (!) to issues concerning translation, as shown by Ernst-August Gutt, in his books listed below.

See:

See also the following article on application of RT to Bible translation:

Return to Index

Rhetorical impact

Rhetorical impact refers to the effect some utterance has upon its hearer. Rhetorical impact has to do with the total bundle of semantics, pragmatics, and speaker intention. Rhetorical impact is sometimes rather different from the normal impact expected from use of a particular language form. This is always true of rhetorical questions, which have the grammar of questions but the meaning of strong statements or rebuke. Rhetoric is the study of the various kinds of forms and impact that utterances have.

Return to Index

Rhetorical question

Rhetorical questions are frequently used in the Bible. Since not all languages use rhetorical questions, we cannot always use the forms of questions when translating rhetorical questions. Real questions expect an answer; rhetorical questions do not. Here are some real questions in the Bible:

ISV John 6.67 So Jesus said to the twelve, "You don't want to leave, too, do you?"

ISV John 18.26 ... "I saw you in the garden with him, didn't I?"

And here are some rhetorical questions, for which no answer is expected, and the situational context lets us know what answer is assumed by the speaker:

NRSV Mark 2.19 Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?" (The assumed answer is no.)

NRSV Mark 11.17 He was teaching and saying, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." (The assumed answer is yes.)

Note that the ISV nicely restructures the rhetorical question to begin in the form of a statement, "It is written," followed by the question tag, "is it not". This makes the rhetorical function of the question even clearer in English than does the straight question form in the NRSV:

ISV Mark 11.17 Then he began to teach them, saying, "It is written, is it not, 'My house should be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have turned it into a hideout for revolutionaires?"

Return to Index

Rhetorical parallelism

Rhetorical parallelism is the most frequent Hebraic poetic structure found in the Bible. It consists of repeated parallel terms in one or more lines of a poetic couplet. The repeated terms may be synonymous or antithetical.

See:

Return to Index