The main reason we need another translation of the Book of Psalms is to eliminate many mistranslations (often willful ones, it appears) and faults (e.g. missing verses) that have accrued over the past four hundred years. Are the latest translations the best? Quite the contrary, and in fact they represent a tendentious watering-down of the original texts.
I know that I've made quite a claim in the above paragraph, but I'm prepared to back it up with examples. In fact, I've already done so in a recent blog entry entitled "The Book of Psalms and its Various Translations," which is also available (and has been since 2011) as a Facebook Note. I provided more evidence in another recent blog entry entitled "Where is Mercy?" Please read both of them if you are interested in seeing and evaluating the evidence.
I know it sounds harsh, but I believe the last honest English translation was the KJV (1608). Unfortunately, its beautiful English is now about as well understood by most people as that of Shakespeare, which is to say somewhat poorly.
The KJV claimed to be based on the "original Hebrew," which unfortunately was not extant then, nor is it now. What was used was the Masoretic Hebrew, which includes many incorrect readings (usually noted in the text) and some actual omissions, even of whole verses.
The Masoretes did most of their work between 400 and 600 CE. They did a splendid job overall, but were afraid to change "a jot or a tittle" of the text that they had before them. Fortunately, the entire Hebrew Bible had already been translated into Greek in Alexandria in about 200 BCE. That work is traditionally said to have been done by seventy scholars, hence its name "Septuagint," abbreviated as "LXX."
In about 400 CE, Saint Jerome produced his Latin translation of the entire Bible, which came to be known as the "Vulgata," or "Vulgate," since Latin was the common language of the time. In the case of the Book of Psalms, he gave us not one, but two translations: one that was based on the Greek of the LXX, and another that was based on a Hebrew text very similar to the Masoretic Text that we have today. These are, in my opinion, the best texts available in a language with which I am well familiar.
Although I can read Greek and Hebrew (with a lot of recourse to a dictionary), it is far easier for me to translate from Jerome's Latin. This, then, has become my settled methodology, and I consult directly with the LXX Greek and the Masoretic Hebrew in cases of doubt.
What I have found is that since about 1945, in Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish translations, there has been a movement toward "softened" meanings that are less accusatory toward the wealthy and less offensive to those in power. A passage that says that the poor man is "set on fire," now says that he "is vexed." "Mercy" is now translated as "steadfast love," and "truth" is now only "fidelity," to cite just a few examples. "Peace" is now the more abstract "wholeness."
My translations will not participate in this obscurantist spinning and textual manipulation. There will be room in them for "mercy," for "truth," and for "peace." Where the Masoretic text is defective, the missing words will be supplied from the Greek translation, which is more than five hundred years older and based on a better Hebrew text that is no longer extant. Words will have their real meanings.
