# Over-Literal Translation Trades Readability for Form Fidelity ## Claim Following a source text's grammatical form too closely can produce a target-language rendering that is technically accurate but genuinely hard to parse. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - Holds when the source and target languages diverge enough in grammar and idiom that word-for-word or clause-for-clause fidelity breaks the target language's own sense-making patterns. - Doesn't mean formal equivalence is always wrong — some readers and purposes value form fidelity even at a readability cost (this note doesn't take a side on the tradeoff, only names it). - Applies past biblical translation to any high-fidelity conversion between structured systems — technical translation, localization, even converting between rigid schemas — wherever "preserving the form" and "preserving the sense" can pull apart. ## Evidence McClellan's worked example is 2 Corinthians 2:5 in the KJV: "but if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part that I may not overcharge you all" — a sentence that follows the Greek's grammatical form closely enough to become nearly unparseable in English. His diagnosis: "they followed too closely the form of the Greek because they were trying to be literal and it ended up being too literal." ## Links - [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/Is the Most Famous Bible Translation Really All That Good (McClellan)]] — because evidence-for; source Literature note holds the full claim-atom breakdown. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Cultural Prestige Detaches From Technical Quality and Poses as Evidence of It]] — because applies-in; the same source's other promoted claim, a distinct quality dimension prestige doesn't rescue. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Faith & Theology MOC]] — because applies-in; translation-philosophy critique of a specific biblical text. ## Tests / falsifiers - Run a comprehension test on matched readers comparing a form-bound passage (like 2 Cor 2:5) against a sense-driven rendering of the same content; if comprehension doesn't drop for the form-bound version, the tradeoff isn't demonstrated for that case. - Look for counterexamples where high formal fidelity and high readability coexist in a translation — if common, the claim needs narrowing to specific language pairs or genres rather than standing as general. ## Maintenance - Last tended: 2026-08-16 - Next review: 2026-11-16 ## Source - [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/Is the Most Famous Bible Translation Really All That Good (McClellan)]] — Dan McClellan's translation-philosophy critique of the KJV's formal-equivalence approach.