# Translation Prestige Can Outlive Translation Fitness ## Claim A translation's inherited prestige can survive long after its language, textual basis, and method stop serving readers who seek authorial meaning. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Evidence **Source:** [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/Is the Most Famous Bible Translation Really All That Good]] — Dan McClellan distinguishes the King James Version's literary and historical influence from its fitness for recovering authorial meaning, citing archaic English, an older textual basis, and formal imitation of Greek that can produce opaque English. The argument doesn't deny literary value. It rejects the inference from cultural status to current translation quality. ## Scope & conditions - Fitness depends on purpose: a text may remain valuable for liturgy, literature, or reception history while being a weak study translation. - Newer doesn't automatically mean better; textual basis, translation method, and editorial process still need evaluation. - Prestige can preserve communal memory even when it no longer signals technical quality. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Target Audience Determines Translation Methodology More Than Equivalence Theory Does]] — extends: translation fitness is relative to what readers need the text to do. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Tool's Difficulty Reputation Outlives the Difficulty]] — parallels: inherited reputation can persist after the conditions that produced it change. - [[Faith & Theology MOC]] — applies-in: Bible choice should distinguish cultural attachment from interpretive purpose. ## Source - [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/Is the Most Famous Bible Translation Really All That Good]] — critique of the KJV's textual, linguistic, and translation-method fitness.