English translations of the Bible abound. Each English Bible we hold in our hands is the product of a certain translation philosophy and goal. Anthony Esolen, a contemporary translator of Dante's Divine Comedy, offers his own view:
"Dante is often obscure. He coins odd words; he uses forms from outside Tuscany; sometimes he is deliberately archaic; sometimes he wants his syntax tangled. When I translated The Divine Comedy, I assumed that my job was not to sand smooth what the Great One had left rough. It astonishes me to see translators do to the Word of God what I have struggeld so hard, even with the severe constraints of meter and thyme, not to do to Dante. I would not have presumed to do it.
. . . If the Bible, at once immediately accessible by children and yet embracing unfathomable truths, does not sometimes suggest the depth of an infinite sea, the translators ought to be sent packing. Let 'em translate signs in trains stations, where dynamic equivalence serves some immediate practical purpose."
- From Touchstone Magazine, December 2006, p. 4 (not available online)