Young's Literal Translation

Young's Literal Translation is a translation of the Bible into English, published in 1862. The translation was made by Robert Young, compiler of Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament. Young produced a "Revised Version" of the translation in 1887. After he died on October 14, 1888, the publisher in 1898 released a new Revised Edition.

Translation philosophy
The Literal Translation is unusual in that, as the name implies, it is a strictly literal translation of the original Hebrew and Greek texts. The Preface to the Second Edition states,


 * If a translation gives a present tense when the original gives a past tense, or a past when it has a present; a perfect aspect for a future tense, or a future for a perfect; an a for a the, or a the for an a; an imperative mood for a subjunctive mood, or a subjunctive for an imperative; a verb for a noun, or a noun for a verb, it is clear that verbal inspiration is as much overlooked as if it had no existence. THE WORD OF GOD IS MADE VOID BY THE TRADITIONS OF MEN. [Emphases in original.]

Therefore, Young used the present tense in many places in which other translations use the past tense, particularly in narratives. For example, the YLT version of Genesis begins as follows:



Young's Literal Translation also consistently renders the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (divine name) throughout the Old Covenant/Testament as "Jehovah", instead of the traditional practice of representing the Tetragrammaton in English as "LORD" in all capitals.
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 * In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth &mdash;
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 * the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters,
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 * and God saith, 'Let light be;' and light is.
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 * And God seeth the light that good, and God separateth between the light and the darkness,
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 * and God calleth to the light 'Day,' and to the darkness He hath called 'Night;' and there is an evening, and there is a morning &mdash; day one.
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 * And God saith, 'Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and let it be separating between waters and waters.'
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 * And God maketh the expanse, and it separateth between the waters which under the expanse, and the waters which above the expanse: and it is so.
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 * And God calleth to the expanse 'Heavens;' and there is an evening, and there is a morning &mdash; day second.
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 * And God saith, 'Let the waters under the heavens be collected unto one place, and let the dry land be seen:' and it is so.
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 * And God calleth to the dry land `Earth,' and to the collection of the waters He hath called 'Seas;' and God seeth that good.
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 * And God saith, 'Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree (whose seed in itself) making fruit after its kind, on the earth:' and it is so.
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 * And the earth bringeth forth tender grass, herb sowing seed after its kind, and tree making fruit (whose seed in itself) after its kind; and God seeth that good;
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 * and there is an evening, and there is a morning &mdash; day third.
 * }

Assessment
Young's translation is closer to the Hebrew than the better-known versions of this passage in English. The Revised Standard Version (RSV), for example, treats Genesis 1:1–3 in this way:


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 * In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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 * The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
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 * And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
 * }

Young better reflects the meaning of the original Hebrew than does the RSV. Bereshith bara elohim, the RSV's "In the beginning God created...", is in the construct state (bereshith), not the absolute (barishona), meaning it refers to an action in progress, not to a completed act. Similarly, there is no license in the Hebrew for the RSV's division of these verses into three sentences (ancient Hebrew lacked punctuation, and sentence divisions have to be inferred), as the order of the words wa ha-aretz hayetha (subject-verb) points to the rendering "the earth being" (Young's "the earth hath existed"), while the RSV's "and the earth was" requires words in the order wa tehi ha-aretz (verb-subject). Young's usage of English present tense rather than past tense has been supported by scholars ranging from the medieval Jewish rabbi Rashi (who advised, "[I]f you are going to interpret [this passage] in its plain sense, interpret it thus: At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was (or the earth being) unformed and void . . . God said, ‘Let there be light.’") to Richard Elliott Friedman in his translation of the Five Books in "The Bible with Sources Revealed" (2002).

It should be noted that the translation has been criticized by some as falling short in some respects. It renders Luke 24:1 as “And on the first of the sabbaths” while it translates Acts 20:7 as “And on the first of the week” even though the two phrases are identical in the Greek texts. To quote the preface "Every effort has been made to secure a comparative degree of uniformity in rendering the original words and phrases. Thus, for example, the Hebrew verb nathan, which is rendered by the King James' translators in sixty-seven different ways... has been restricted and reduced to ten, and so with many others. It is the Translator's ever-growing conviction, that even this smaller number may be reduced still further."

Eternity or age
Another important feature of YLT is its treatment of the Hebrew word olam and the Greek word aion. These two words have basically the same meaning, and YLT translates them and their derivatives as “age” or “age-during”. Other English versions most often translate them to indicate eternality (eternal, everlasting, forever, etc). However, there are notable exceptions to this in all major translations, such as Matthew 28:20: “…I am with you always, to the end of the age” (NRSV), the word “age” being a translation of aion. Rendering aion to indicate eternality in this verse would result in the contradictory phrase “end of eternity”, so the question arises whether it should ever be so. Proponents of Universal Reconciliation point out that this has significant implications for the problem of hell. Contrast Matthew 25:46 in well-known English translations with its rendering in YLT:

And these shall go away to punishment age-during, but the righteous to life age-during. (YLT)

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (NIV)

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (NASB)

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. (KJV)