alt Hacker News> I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand
Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
But you do?
Replies
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect also applies to the majority of translations.
> Why do you assume a (sic) entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement (sic) for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
That assumption does not appear anywhere in their comment.
Your rude strawman question only makes sense if assuming that ivrit-tirvi is not a fluent speaker of Hebrew and is somehow translating the Hebrew into something else that they understand ... which is quite unlikely, since ivrit (עִבְרִית) is the Hebrew word for the English word "Hebrew".
And the NIV translation into English reflects ideological interpretation that one can avoid by reading the original Hebrew if one understands it.
Translations are inherently lossy, especially for cases like the bible that use less common dialects and have conflicting source versions. Are any biblical translators claiming that their work is a 100% reproduction of the original? I doubt it. Most I'm familiar with readily acknowledge that it's a very messy process and two experts acting in good faith will produce different translations in many cases.