Along with that, they have to consider the audience. This is easier to understand, but most of the words are different, the meter is gone, and the rhyme of “stand” and “hand” are gone.Īnd this is just translating English to English.īible translators have the difficult task of translating ancient Hebrew and Greek into readable English. SparkNotes translates it as, “When this dance is over, I’ll see where she stands, and then I’ll touch her hand with my rough and ugly one.” In order to understand these words, you would probably have to write it differently. Now let’s say you are teaching this to a ninth-grade class. What is Romeo talking about here? What does this mean? Why is there a funny accent mark over “blessed”?

“ The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,Īnd, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.” To get an idea, let’s take a look at this couplet which appears in Act I of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”: In spite of this, it is often difficult for modern readers like us to understand. Shakespeare’s English is often called Old English, but in reality, it is early Modern English. To understand this question, we can compare it to Shakespeare. Why Are There So Many Bible Translations? Much of the reason for this is that Americans are upgrading Bibles, giving them as gifts, and just as often, we are buying different versions of the Bible. households, and that the average Bible-per-house ratio is over four.Īll this to say that even with an average of for Bibles per American household, we still continue to purchase millions of Bibles each and every year. It is estimated that a Bible is present in 85% of U.S.

Many of us have heard that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and this is a true statement. The reasons behind the proliferation of Bible translations are complex, but can be simplified to something very simple: audience and purpose.

Most literal bible translation chart