I wrote this in response to a bible forum question about translation accuracy, reposting here for reference:
For the most part the NIV is an okay translation–its has criticized a bit for certain omisions and changes of a handful of verses…but there’s many a worse translation out there as far as accuracy goes. But its a very popular translation none the less, perhaps in large part because of marketing and that its a fairly “easy to understand” translation.
I’ve seen a bit less criticisms against the accuracy of NASB and either NKJV or KJV because they use “formal equivalence” rather than “dynamic equivlance” (what NIV uses). Formal equivalence is very word for word, where dynamic is more thought for thought. Formal equivalence tries to emulate the original language sentence structure as closely as possible (less places for the translation to make interpretations in their translation). But that can be difficult for a new reader of the bible to understand, especially since formally equivalent translations often use a lot of big seminary type words that can be hard to understand if you don’t have a good dictionary next to your bible. But as you preserve sentence structure there’s things about the bible you can notice that you won’t see in NIV…like when the writing the point and backing it up his argument by staring a bunch of sentences with the word “For”, often times the For isn’t rendered in NIV. And there’s also an issue in accuracy to consider of bias based on theological and social reasons. Like whether you find “gender inclusive” language more or less accurate…or whether the translating group translated in such a way as to support their personal biases…NIV and RSV are both translations I’ve heard various criticisms of the writers having certain beliefs and “twisting” the word to support their view in subtle ways. In NIV its in large part (but not entire part) related to some of those verse omissions. That and there’s issues like do you leave all the weights and measures in their original terms or translate them into modern weights and measures? If you leave them in ancient terms its hard to relate to whether that’s a lot or a little…but if you change them into american measurements, the quantities may shift (eg if you compare pounds to kilos, 12 pounds is not going to be 12 kilos) so you may lose sight of significant numbers.
Personally, I like NASB for bible study for its adherence to the grammatical structures (a lot of interesting insights come out of them)…I’ve been memorizing out of NKJV because that was the requirement at bible school and what my church uses in their sunday services. When I was a new christian I really liked NIV because I found it easier to understand. For my early morning devotionals, I’ll sometimes use NCV, because I find it very readable.
Different bibles may suit different purposes. As a rule of thumb, when in doubt about the accuracy of one bible’s translation of a passage, the best thing you can do is compare between translations (ignoring, of course, paraphrase translations like the Message as accuracy is not a strength of paraphrases). Biblegateway and Crosswalk websites make comparing translations really easy to do (and free).
All that said…any translation, even a “less accurate” one can be used for much good and learning about God and his character and how to live a righteous, godly life. If NIV is helping you to be a more godly person, don’t let anyone discourage you from it… But it never hurts to be informed and know both the strengths and weaknesses of your translation of choice so you can defend whether you’re using an appropriate translation for a particular purpose 🙂