Where’s the italics?

Have you ever thought about the italicised words in your Bible? Well, it’s common in any kind of translation to discover that differences in both vocabulary and grammar between the source language and the target language don’t allow each single source word to be translated by a single target word.

Sometimes there’s a Hebrew or Greek word that we can’t properly translate into English, e.g., When Jesus sees Simon and Andrew fishing, Mark 1:17 says: And the Jesus said to them..., but we can’t put ‘the’ before Jesus in that context, so virtually all translations (including those that claim to be literal translations) just quietly drop that word. (The Open English Translation Literal Version is more literal than most other literal versions, and displays the to indicate the dropped Greek word: see https://Freely-Given.org/OBD/par/MRK/C1V17.htm.)

But in Mrk 1:19, Jesus sees James (well, Jacob actually but that’s another story), the of Zebedee and his brother in a boat preparing their nets. No, that’s not a typo—the word ‘son’ (or ‘child’ or ‘offspring’ or ‘descendant’ or ‘one’) isn’t there in the Greek—it’s implied! So the KJB and most translations add a word to help the English reader. In the 1500’s, italic type was invented to be softer, more like handwriting, and Bible publishers took advantage of italics to print added words in order to be transparent and to inform the readers of their decision to add words not in the original text.

However, over the next hundred years or so (according to the Wikipedia article on Italic type), italics became used for emphasis. So now the added words (which should really be de-emphasised because they’re not in the original text) appear as emphasised words! And since then, Bible edition after edition has continued to use italics when the purpose of modern italics is exactly the opposite of what should happen with added words! Oh dear!

But not any more. The new, radical, Open English Translation of the Bible shows added words in grey, so they’re marked to help the reader know they’re added, yet appropriately de-emphasised as they should be.

As the Western church seems to be on a path to becoming less and less relevant to modern society, are you able to join us to help make the OET the best Bible translation to reach out to modern young people in a language and format that they understand. Please join us and help.

Robert Hunt, https://OET.Bible