GOD'S WORD Translation(GW)

GOD'S WORD Translation was produced by God's Word to the Nations Bible Society (now God's Word to the Nations Mission Society) in Cleveland, Ohio, and first published in 1995, after the organization scrapped an earlier New Testament project in 1992 and started over with an entirely fresh translation from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Five staff scholars, seventeen technical reviewers, and four English style reviewers worked on the text; publishing rights later passed to Green Key Books and then Baker Publishing Group, until the Mission Society took the translation back in-house in 2016. Its most recent edition is dated 2020.

GW's stated method, "closest natural equivalence," sits between strict word-for-word translation and freer thought-for-thought paraphrase: the goal is the most natural English rendering that still corresponds closely to the structure and meaning of the original text, verse by verse, rather than committing wholesale to either extreme.

On gender language, GW takes a moderate approach: generic references to people are usually rendered inclusively — "humans" rather than "man" in Genesis 1, "brothers and sisters" rather than plain "brothers" in the New Testament letters — while keeping masculine language for God and clearly male-specific passages.

GW is written at a notably easy reading level, roughly fifth grade, achieved less through vocabulary simplification alone than through careful attention to natural English sentence rhythm and phrasing during the translation and review process.