Translation Commitments

How these commitments work together

These commitments aren’t separate from each other but inform each other. They are also not weighted equally. They set the boundaries for each other and guide the choices that happen as I translate within those boundaries.

What translation is and isn't

Translation is not the same thing as decoding one-to-one meanings. Even what we were taught to do in early Greek classes isn’t the same as mature translation because translation isn’t just about looking things up in the dictionary and filling in the blank. True translation requires understanding the culture and mindset of the original writers and audience, looking at how and when words are used and what understanding is being communicated.

Sometimes the first (or second or third) definition listed in the dictionary doesn’t communicate what the writer intended. Looking at the context around the word, around the whole Bible, in other literature of the time, the historical context and cultural contexts (yes, there were multiple cultures influencing the writers at the same time) all must be seriously considered. It’s about making thousands of tiny judgments about tone, imagery, ambiguity, and what a sentence is trying to communicate for the reader while staying anchored to what the Greek can honestly bear.

The overall translational philosophy for the LIT

I set out to translate with meaning-first clarity and source-text accountability. Following Nida’s focus on communicating the text’s function in the target language, I aim for English that lands with the kind of effect the Greek likely produced, rather than preserving churchy phrasing for its own sake. I want English-speaking readers to have, as close as possible, the same experience the original Greek-speaking audiences would likely have had. And following Pym’s emphasis on translation as a series of choices with real consequences, I make my decisions transparent, manage risk through careful wording and footnotes, and resist “default” English options that import theology or stigma not required by the text.

How the philosophy guides the basic approach

Faithfulness to the text sets the boundaries for all the other commitments. Every translation decision is intended to stay inside the semantic range (the realm of possible meaning) of the Greek. It does that by paying attention to lexical definitions, patterns of word usage both inside and outside the Bible, and careful attention to how it fits into the grammar and syntax of the whole passage, as well as literary purpose, metaphor, and voice.

But faithfulness isn’t the same thing as repeating inherited church-language. So avoiding religious technical language pushes against the automatic use of jargon, not because tradition is worthless, but because tradition always carries baggage with it. For instance, the word “flesh” is not an incorrect translation of sarx, but because the tradition has turned it into jargon, it’s not neutral. It carries doctrinal meaning that may or may not have been part of the original intention. Using fresh language allows readers to be curious about the meaning in new ways.

The real life implications

The rest of the commitments address the ethics of translation. Most translators pretend to be neutral or not to see the ethical impact of their decisions. They pretend that in attempting to be faithful to the text, they can’t possibly go wrong in other ways. They are wrong because there are many ways to stay faithful to the original language that are all technically valid but that lead to very different meanings in English and impacts on readers, churches, and theology.

Prior assumptions matter as much as "accuracy"

The Bible is a library produced by communities under empire, and it consistently critiques domination. So reading with the oppressed means the “default reader” is not the powerful, the secure, or the socially protected. It means asking, in every passage: who is vulnerable here, what is being normalized, and what kind of world does this wording quietly build? The renderings always still fall within the options of what the Greek can mean despite choosing options that may be quite different from what other translators who are more comfortable with authoritarianism might choose.

Trauma-informed translation adds another layer of honesty: some passages have a long history of being weaponized. When the Greek allows more than one responsible rendering, the LIT will prefer options that reduce shame and harm without altering meaning. And where the text itself is hard to swallow, the LIT aims to be transparent by using footnotes to explain interpretive choices rather than disguising them. It is not about softening language. It’s about refusing to select wording that instills shame when a non-shaming option exists. In fact, it can explicitly be about refusing to soften the reality of harm that is captured in the text, such as translating doulos as “enslaved person” instead of as “servant.”

Finally, God always looks like Jesus and belovedness and belonging are about refusing to allow the act of translating and the LIT itself to drift into a cold, academic translation that accidentally reinforces the very exclusion the Gospel confronts. When the Greek forces hard questions about God, power, wrath, judgment, or worthiness, the LIT treats Jesus as the clearest lens for what God is like and treats human dignity as non-negotiable. After all, Christ is “the image of God, who is unseen.” In practice, this means the translation chooses the options from among the many possible ones that point the meaning toward the character and values that are clearly taught and modeled by Jesus and the themes of love and belonging for all that served as the core of that message.