The following article from SIL’s Journal of Translation was incredibly helpful to me in providing contemporary context for Bible translation theories, especially meaning-based translation. Inside, you’ll find discussions and the history of terms like dynamic equivalency, meaning-based translation, functional equivalency, optimal equivalency, relevance theory, frames of reference, and skopostheorie, among helpful bibliographies and charts and graphs. The article, like the journal, may be freely downloaded.

Kerr, Glen J. “Dynamic Equivalence and Its Daughters: Placing Bible Translation Theories in Their Historical Context,” Journal of Translation 7(1): pp. 1-19.

Here are two interesting excerpts to spur you on to read more (p.11 and p. 13, respectively):

“The truth is that practice in translating has far outdistanced theory[.]”

and

[O]ne gets the sense that much of the writing on dynamic equivalence was a sort of polemic against formal equivalence, which was viewed as the regnant approach to Bible translation in need of dislodging.

This post is especially for Joe, who was looking for something like this ages ago.