Do Readers Actually Like Poetry? Results of Research Measuring the Acceptability of Poetic Translations of Old Testament Poetry

About one third of the Old Testament is poetry, yet most Bibles translate these parts of Scripture as prose rather than as poetry. As a result, readers are missing much of the impact and poetic beauty of the original. Isn’t it our desire to translate in a way that has the impact of the original? To address this, there has been a renewed push in recent times to engage in the difficult task of translating biblical poetry as poetry. While such efforts attempt to transfer the vitality and beauty of the original, little research has been done as to whether readers actually like poetic translations. In this paper I will discuss research that sought answers to questions about likeability, impact, understandability and poetic beauty by comparing selected passages in three standard non-poetic Bible translations (ESV, NIV and NLT) with poetic translations of these passages. The survey results show that overall, while respondents recognise the poetic beauty of the poetic translations, that surprisingly, this usually does not translate into increased likeability, and that most readers prefer prose translations. The survey results also show that the more domesticating a poetic translation is, the more acceptable it becomes to readers. A key recommendation of this research is that if a translation team is considering doing poetic translation, that they first test for reader acceptability before doing so.