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Mixed
Message
What
Publishers Can Learn from The Message Remix
 I
have mixed feelings about The
Message Remix. If my own experience is anything to judge
by, Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Scripture is enjoying popular
success. I see it everywhere. The Message Remix seems to
be the Bible most likely to be seen in the hands of students and
coffeeshop dwellers. I can understand the appeal. The hand-sized
hardback edition pictured here is approaching the status of "design
classic," if such a label can be applied to Bibles. As far
as I'm concerned, the designers made a series of excellent choices
that make The Message Remix the best inexpensive hardback
Bible on the market. What I hope to do in this article is outline
some of the "lessons" other publishers can learn from
this example.
MISGIVINGS
In spite of my admiration for the design, though, I still have misgivings
about the paraphrase. To be honest, I am conflicted over the issue
of paraphrases in general, so my problems with The Message aren't
confined to The Message. They apply just as much to the
New Living Translation (NLT), another version that has
done some trailblazing design. Translations used to be divided into
two camps: formal equivalence, where translators attempt to communicate
the words of Scripture, and dynamic equivalence, where translators
attempt to communicate the thoughts or ideas. Dynamic equivalence
was justified on the grounds that it took into account the abilities
of the reader, accommodating the text to the reader's understanding.
While advocates of formal equivalence may think of this as "dumbing
down" the text, everyone agrees that a translation should communicate
its meaning to the audience, and that requires a certain amount
of accommodation. When I was growing up, the New International
Version was the premier example of dynamic equivalance. Now,
though, there is a lot of competition for the title, and I have
even noticed online pundits describing the NIV as too literal, which
shows how subjective these concepts can be. Will translators justify
projects thirty years from now on the basis of how literal and difficult-to-read
The Message or the NLT are?
I
am in the formal equivalence camp. I find it much easier to study
and interpret Scripture with such translations than I do with the
looser dynamic equivalence translations. Still, I believe there
is a place for both. Comparing several translations of a disputed
passage can help the interpreter arrive at a nuanced understanding
of the text. My concern is that, as more traditional dynamic translations
like the NIV come to be seen as "literal," and paraphrastic
editions like The Message take their place, the average
reader will be taken farther and farther away from what the text
actually says. The key to reading a paraphrase like The Message,
in my opinion, is (a) to avoid "close" reading, since
the word or phrase you scrutize is as likely to be Peterson's as,
say, Paul's, and (b) to keep a more literal translation handy for
comparison.
 LESSONS
LEARNED
What this ought to make clear is that my admiration for the design
of The Message Remix is coupled with a desire to see publishers
of more useful translations like the English
Standard Version do likewise. So, what are the lessons we can
learn from the design of The Message Remix?
(1)
Cheap Bibles don't have to look cheap. The traditional
approach to manufacturing an inexpensive Bible is to print the same
layout on cheaper paper, slap imitation leather on it, and apply
to cheap gilding around the edges of the page. As a result, cheap
Bibles look very cheap, and they don't hold up very well to regular
use. Personally, I am not convinced that there is any role for "bonded
leather" in Bible publishing. I feel the same way about bonded
leather Bibles that Ayn Rand's Howard Roark felt about fluting on
columns -- it is a sad imitation of the real thing, dictated more
by tradition than a thoughtful appreciation of what the design object
is intended to do. The Message Remix is available in nasty
bonded leather editions, and I'm sure they sell a few, but I have
never seen one in use. The attractive, modern hardback is the Bible
of choice for the users I've observed.
(2)
Design with readers in mind. One of my pet peeves about
Bible publishing is that, more often than not, the preferences of
readers are not taken into consideration. The Message Remix
bucks this trend in several ways. First, consider the size.
The designers settled on measurements somewhere in between the familiar
trade paperback and mass market paperback sizes. The Bible, in spite
of its width, can be held comfortably in one hand. Second, consider
the binding. Not all hardbacks are created equal.
Most of them, including the vast majority of fiction hardbacks I
purchase at the store, do not lay flat when opened. Readers are
forced to bend the binding back to make the book stay open, which
is why you see so many hardbacks with cracked spines in the used
bookstores. The Message Remix, though, lays perfectly flat,
as the photograph above illustrates. I can open mine to Genesis
1 and it will stay open on the table without any effort on my part.
(3)
Typography matters. The vast majority of Bibles are just
plain hard on the eyes. Type is archaic. It is set in narrow columns
and littered with notations. In some translations -- the KJV and
NASB come to mine -- a new paragraph begins with each verse, so
that sentence and paragraph structure is difficult to discern. There
is no excuse for any Bible published today, no matter what translation
is used, not to feature paragraphed text. In addition, every Bible
published today should use modern, readable type. The Message
Remix makes excellent choices in this regard. The text is set
in an attractive serif font -- it looks a lot like Adobe Garamond
to me -- with titles and headings in bold, sans serif. The text
is paragraphed, dialogue is punctuated appropriately, and verse
numbers are set in the margin.
 (3a)
Single column text. The fact that The Message Remix
is layed out in single columns deserves a point all its own. This
is what readers are accustomed to, and it makes more visual sense
than the traditional double column layout. I don't know why so many
publishers are committed to double columns. The practice creates
all sorts of problems. For example, the ESV's narrow columns force
unintentional line breaks on passages set in verse. The problem
is solved in the standalone edition of the Psalms, which is set
in a single column. But for some reason, the single column format
that works so well in the ESV standalone editions of the Psalms
and the Gospel of John is not available in a complete edition of
the Bible. Designers take note: single-column formatting makes a
world of difference in terms of the reader's experience.
(4)
Design choices add value without adding cost. For months,
I admired the design of The Message Remix, but I didn't
buy one on principle. I didn't plan on reading it. Sure, I've bought
Bibles I don't plan on reading in the past, just to study their
design choices up close (why I don't know), but for some reason
I was able to resist the urge for quite a while. When I finally
broke down and bought a copy of The Message Remix, I was
surprised to find that it isn't really a "nice" publication
at all. The paper is not particuarly good. I had to hunt through
a half dozen copies to find a cover that had not been notched by
shelf wear, which suggests that the cover quality is nothing special.
The last page actually has text printed on it -- Revelation 22 --
and that's rather strange. Still, none of these flaws detract from
the whole. The design choices are so good that the fact corners
were cut in the production doesn't really matter. Placed beside
a comparably priced hardback of another translation, I don't think
anyone in the world would say that the rival matched The Message
Remix in terms of beauty, utility and quality. In fact, I suspect
there are a host of more expensive Bibles that would suffer in comparison.
The lesson here is that good design can make up for the need to
produce an affordable edition.
CONCLUSION
I used to teach a group of college students on a weekly basis from
the Authorized Version. Although some of them had grown up with
it, most had difficulty with the seventeenth century translation.
But I discovered that if I took the original text and re-formatted
it in accord with modern typographic conventions -- clean type,
single column, contemporary paragraphs and punctuation -- the students
comprehension of what they read increased dramatically. In spite
of all the lip service paid to publishing Bibles that are accessible
to modern readers, I am surprised at how conventional and traditional
the design of Bibles remains. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that
improvements to design would do more to aid comprehension than the
yearly re-translations that are now the fashion. If advocates of
literal -- or "essentially literal" -- translation would
apply as much effort to design as the popular paraphases now do,
I think a generation of readers might discover how accessible a
rigorous, literal translation can be.
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