New Living Translation

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New Living Translation

Full name:	New Living Translation
Abbreviation:	NLT
Complete Bible published:	1996 (Revised in 2004)
Textual Basis:	35% deviation from Nestle-Aland 27th edition (NT)
Translation type:	24% paraphrase rate
Copyright status:	Copyright 2004 Tyndale House Publishers
Genesis 1:1-3
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
John 3:16
For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

The Bible in English +/-
Old English (pre-1066)
Middle English (1066-1500)
Early Modern English (1500-1800)
Modern Christian (1800-)
Modern Jewish (1853-)
Miscellaneous

The New Living Translation is a translation of the Bible into an easily readable form of modern English. It started out as an effort to revise The Living Bible, but the project evolved into a new English translation from available texts in the original languages. Some stylistic influences of The Living Bible, however, do remain.

This translation follows the dynamic equivalence or "thought for thought" method of translation rather than a more literal method. The goal is "to create a text that would make the same impact in the life of modern readers that the original text had for the original readers" (quoted from A Note to Readers).

A team of eighty-seven translators worked on it; the process began in 1989, and the translation was completed and published in 1996. A revision of the NLT was released in 2004 which resolved some of the awkward wording of the original, as well as reworking some of the poetic verses into more acceptable poetic form.

Along with other modern language versions (New Century Version, Contemporary English Version) the NLT is an accurate, readable, idiomatic Bible, but is a bit more literary in style and flow than the others.