The Easy-to-Read New Testament [antikvár]

Preface This particular version of the New Testament was originally prepared to meet the special needs of the deaf. Hearing persons are not usually aware of the particular problems that the deaf face in reading standard English. Hearing persons learn English largely through oral conversation. The deaf do not have this opportunity, so their experienee with the language is severely limited. It is this limited experienee with the spoken language that causes most of the problems the deaf face in Pearning to read. But the deaf are not the onlv ones with limited language experienee. Chilclren, people with English as a second language, and many others face similar difficulties in reading. The Easy-to-Read New Testament (ERNT) has helped such people to overcome or avoid the most common obstacles to reading with understanding. One of the basic ideas that guided the work on the ERNT was that good translation is good communication. The main concern of the translators was always to communicate to the reader the message of the New Testament writers as effectively and as naturally as their originál writings did to people in the first century. Faithful translation is not just matching words in a dictionary. It is a process of expressing the originál message in a form that will not only have the same meaning, but will sound as relevant, attract the same interest, and have the same impact today as it did nineteen hundred years ago. Effective communication, then, was very important to the translators of the ERNT. This desire to communicate did not make accuracy any less important, but "accuracy" was understood to be the faithful representation of ideas, not the exact correspondence of formai linguistic features. The Newr Testament writers showed by the language style they used that they were interested in good communication. The translators of the ERNT considered this an important example to follow. So they worked to convey to their special audience the meaning of the New Testament text in a form that would be simple and natural. They used language that, instead of working as a barrier to understanding, would provide a key to unlock the truths of ix