Rob,
**You wrote: ** As far as Spanish translations is concerned the ones I use the most are: the “Nacar-Colunga”, excellent, the “Torres-Amat” , roughly equivalent to the Douay-Reims, but in its more current version. Real good too. And as I mentioned before the top of the crop is the “Biblia de Navarra”, (30 years in the making!), wich words truly wouldn’t describe the beauty, the fidelity, and the directness of the same. The “Biblia de Jerusalen” I use too, but I read it last since it tends to be more “dynamic/interpretative”, but real esay to read. Of course, being a study bible is good to have. I don’t kow if there is the “New Bible of Jerusalem” translation into Spanish, but as far as the English translation is concerned I would never use it. I bought it but gave it away.
There are 3 or 4 more good translations, made in South America and Mexico that I still don’t have, & I’m looking forward to check them out.
Now, in the horrendous category you have 'Dios Habla al Hombre", a modernist paraphrase, not a real translation, done by the American Bible Society. Totally biased with a Protestant slant.
The very much used “Biblia Latinoamericana”, is very interpretative, and politically tilted to the left so is not to be recomended. The footnotes are more of a sociological view thnt a biblical one.
The advantage in Spanish is that we do have quite a few Catholic Spanish translation, but unfortunately that the does nort occur in English. That’s why I feel sad for the poor USCC sponsored NAB not reaching the mark.
Rob, Yes, it is very good, indeed, to read the Bible in a fine, “formal equivalent” translation. Because Spanish (and that includes today’s Castillian Spanish) is so grammatically precise and free of the vagueness and ambiguity that intrinsically afflict modern English (although the Tudor English of the Douay-Rheims and Authorised “King James” Versions was more precise than what English as a language became over the centuries since), it helps to use as literal a Spanish translation as is reasonably possible as a study tool (or, if one is born a Spanish speaker, as the primary Bible version). One can come so close to the Greek (or Clementine Vulgate Latin) of the New Testament in a Spanish translation, more so than is possible, I think, in modern English, unless the English translator resort to a lot of grammatically explanatory footnotes or to cumbersome locutions. There are a few editions, hard to seek out, of the Protestants’ Spanish Bible, the Reina-Valera Version, that predate the 19th and 20th century revisions of it. Sectaries and Protestants complain of how too “Popish” the early editions of the Reina-Valera Version were! Of course, that makes them the more desirable, the earlier the better! Reina and Valera were Protestants, but they were honest and accurate translators who did not let the kind of bias that afflicts their later revisers get in the way of translating the Bible into Spanish.
Therefore, what a waste it is for anymore to use a “dynamic equivalence” Spanish translation such as the dreadful (and banal) “Dios habla hoy” paraphrase! I have ordered the Torres-Amat translation, but, alas, it seems to be snagged in getting to me. You and others have commended it very highly, so I desire to possess it, too.
You know, I find the Spanish translation of the Novus Ordo liturgy far more beautiful than the English and French Novus Ordo liturgies that I have encountered. One can live with the *Novus Ordo *more easily, feeling a lot less deprived of the 1962 *Missale Romanum’s *beauties, in Spanish than in English. There were Spanish-speaking parishes in Montréal, but, unfortunately, none here in Rouyn-Noranda that I know of. Being from Southern California originally, I feel very “at home” in Spanish.
You have good discernment, Rob!
Jerry Parker