moreover, in the modern business of Bible publishing, the more "differ- ent" a translation is, the more risk there is that it won't sell. Thus there is a pressure on translators, committees, publishers, etc., to keep ren- derings conservative in meaning, even though, happily, usually up- to-date in idiomatic language. Finally, most people hate to go out on a limb with a translation in print. Many translation problems are mat- ters of ambiguity: There is more than one way to construe the origi- nal. But space limitations do not permit translators to offer an explanation every time they might wish to render something from the original in a truly new way. So they almost always err on the side of caution. As a result, all modern translations tend, albeit with per- fectly good intentions, to be overly "safe" and traditional. In the working of a translation committee, the lone genius is usually out- voted by the cautious majority.
Therefore, every so often you might actually produce a better translation than others have done, because you can invest much more time exegeting your passage than the individuals or committees were able to because of the speed at which they were required to work. Besides, you are choosing a translation suitable for your particular reader(s) rather than for the whole English-speaking world. Remem- ber: A word doesn't so much have an individual meaning as a range of meanings. Choosing from that range of meanings is often subjective and should be something you do for the benefit of your audience, rather than something you leave entirely to others who have no knowledge of your audience and must translate strictly for the masses. Fortunately, in an exegesis paper you can explain briefly to your reader, in the annotations to your translation, the options you had to choose from, and your reason(s) for choosing the particular English word that you did. Those who worked on the various ancient or modern versions did not have such an opportunity.
Douglas Stuart, Old Testament Exegesis, 3rd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1980), 41.
