The Anglicised edition of the NIV 2011 update has recently been published by Hodder & Stoughton. For details please see my post at Gentle Wisdom.
Anglicised NIV 2011 now available
Published by Peter Kirk
Peter lives in Chelmsford, UK. He started in life by studying Physics at the University of Cambridge, and worked for several years in the electronics and software industry. He studied theology to MA level at London Bible College, now London School of Theology. Then he joined Wycliffe Bible Translators UK, and after training in linguistics he served for seven years in the Caucasus region, coordinating a Bible translation project. In 2002 he left WBT, but until 2008 continued to work part time as an exegetical adviser to the same translation project. Google profile View all posts by Peter Kirk
Thanks very much for this, Peter. The NIV reads well, but there are occasional jarring Americanisms, such as “write you” where we would say “write to you” and “spit” as past tense, where we would say “spat.”
Small differences, but it’s nice to have a Bible in the language that you speak and not have someone else’s dialect imposed on you.
Thank you, David. We will have to check when we see the text whether these Americanisms are still in the Anglicised text. To be fair, there are non-North American members of the CBT, so this is not a one-sided matter of imposing one dialect. Meanwhile, I wonder if there will ever be an Australianised edition? How would that differ from the Anglicised, except for the occasional use of “G’day”?
I’ve been reading Harry Potter, and I must admit to loving how British the word “snog” is. So if it’s the UK NIV, it will probably have to be replaced with “pash” for the AU edition.
More seriously, the Australian Journal of Linguistics vol 30 no 2 has a substantial article on Australian spelling. We really have our own system, which is closer to UK that US, but distinct all the same. For example, while the UK still uses -ize in many situations, we use -ise with a much higher frequency. Ironically, a UK edition might rightly use -ize at times, but that would still seem like an Americanism to Aussies!
Thanks, Dannii. I haven’t seen the Anglicised NIV for Matthew 26:49, but I would be surprised to see “snog” there. I almost always use -ise, except when it is actually wrong, so I am probably more Aussie-friendly than many of us Brits.