Young's Literal Translation 1898 (YLT98)

Robert Young

Robert Young (1822-1888) was a Scottish scholar and publisher. He was a member of the Free Church of Scotland. In his spare time he devoted himself to learning oriental languages. He was based in Edinburgh and worked as a printer, specialising in books which promoted biblical studies.

Young's Literal Translation

In 1862 he published “The Holy Bible, Consisting of the Old and New Covenants; Translated according to the Letter and Idioms of the Original Languages” usually known as Young’s Literal Translation. The translation took a very literal rendering of the Hebrew and Greek into English, and followed the tenses of the original language, without compromising it for natural flowing English.

In 1879 Robert Young published “The Analytical Concordance to the Bible” for the King James Version (KJV). The 1st revised edition of his translation was produced in 1887, when he revised the text according to the Westcott-Hort critical text.

A 3rd revision was published posthumously after he died in 1898, which uses the term Jehovah for God where previously it had used LORD in small capitals.

The 1898 3rd edition text (YLT98) was digitised for the British and Foreign Bible Society in 2014, who maintain the text.