Functional and Formal Translation
In the preface to the first edition, W. Hall Harris III, Ph.D., "The NET Bible Project Director" claims that the NET Bible solves the problem of dynamic vs. formal equivalence:
he translators and editors used the notes to give a translation that was formally equivalent, while placing a somewhat more functionally equivalent translation in the text itself to promote better readability and understandability. The longstanding tension between these two different approaches to Bible translation has thus been fundamentally solved.
The promotional copy for the NET Bible advertises the advantage of this feature in the following way: "The translators’ notes make the original languages far more accessible, allowing you to look over the translator’s shoulder at the very process of translation."
Read more about this topic: New English Translation
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“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
—General prologue, Wycliffe translation of the Bible (1384)