Popular NIV to be replaced by New Version

Kiss your NIV goodbye. The New International Version of the bible as we now know it will not be published any more after it's replaced by a new revised version coming out in 2011. Of couirse, not everybody's happy about it -- me included.
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From Courier-Journal.com (Louisville, KY):

NIV Bible update may spark battle

Version would use more modern English

The Bible translation that has served as the, well, bible of the evangelical movement is getting an update.

Depending on how it's done, it could ignite the parent of all translation battles. Or it could reconcile a conflict that has pitted sibling against sibling.

More than 300 million copies of the New International Version of the Bible have been sold since it came out in 1978. It has become the translation of choice for many conservative evangelicals. And it has been packaged in countless ways — from standard study Bibles with commentary to a couples Bible with relationship lessons to camouflage-covered military versions.

But a quarter-century after its last revision, its copyright holder says it's time to bring it up to date with current uses of the English language. One noncontroversial example would be replacing “alien” with “foreigner,” but a conflict may loom over the use of gender in pronouns and other grammatical forms.

Controversy has surrounded two efforts to update the NIV — a New International Version Inclusive published in Britain in the 1990s and another that resulted in the Today's New International Version earlier this decade.

In both cases, translators used more “inclusive” language involving gender. (You need a scorecard to keep track of the versions.)

But some criticized those versions as more politically than linguistically correct. The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution in 2002 contending that the TNIV version “had gone beyond acceptable translation standards” in some cases where “father” was changed to “parent,” “man” to “mortals” and “sons of God” to “children of God.” Defenders said that as most English speakers no longer use male terms when referring to people regardless of sex, the Bibles they use should follow suit.

Full article here.

Related article (from USA Today): Update of popular "NIV" Bible due in 2011.