Nida sought to make Bible accessible  Photo by Vicki Harris
Photo by Vicki Harris  Eugene Nida died this week in Brussels,
Belgium, age 96. Though unknown to many, The Rev. Nida was a
groundbreaking leader in the field of biblical translation.
Trained as a linguist, this brilliant scholar fulfilled a life-
long calling of making the Bible accessible in hundreds of
languages by translating the original biblical texts by a
principle Mr. Nida called “dynamic equivalence.”  There are two
basic methods of translating the original languages into any
other language. The translator can faithfully translate each
word as closely as possible to the original Greek or Hebrew word
thus offering a “literal” translation. Such a translation,
though, is often wooden, cramped and even incomprehensible
because the sentence structure and thought structure of the
ancient world is radically different the way we form sentences
and paragraphs today. Furthermore, many words in the ancient
languages carry different meanings than today;