Dynamic equivalence translations of the Bible, according to Leland Ryken, not only assume illiteracy in their readers, but also ensure that readers remain at a low literacy level.

   Further assumptions about modern readers fill out the picture of what I call a naive readership. Dynamic equivalence translations regularly assume that contemporary readers struggle with figurative language, so that, in the words of one translation, “at times we have chosen to translate or illuminate the metaphor” (NLT). Incidentally, translating the metaphor is exactly what equivalence translations do not do; they do not translate the metaphor but remove it from sight. Not only is figurative language said to be beyond the ability of modern readers, but so is the ability to enter the ancientness of foreignness of the biblical world. In the preface to the NIV, we read that the translators based two of their renderings on the premise that “for most readers today the phrases ‘the Lord of hosts’ and ‘God of hosts’ have little meaning.” An unstated and perhaps unrecognized assumption in all this is that readers cannot be educated beyond their current abilities—to me a naive and untenable premise. If this were not the operating premise, translation committees would not fix their translation at a lowest common denominator of reading ability and comprehension. In effect, “easy reading” translations ensure that readers will remain at a naive level of comprehension, even if the translators would disavow that this is their aim.
   This, then, is one way in which dynamic equivalence translations are naive: the translators producing them assume an audience with minimal linguistic and theological ability and then produce a translation adapted to the assumed needs of the audience. Essentially literal translations are not naive in this sense. They expect from their readers what we as a society expect of educated adults and even bright teenagers in other areas of life. The reply to the charge of elitism is simple: essentially literal translations make the Bible neither more nor less difficult than it was in the original. Faithfulness to the original is the goal of essentially literal translation; catering to the assumed wants and needs of the modern reader is the goal of dynamic equivalence translations.

—Leland Ryken, Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation (Crossway, 2005), 64–65.

Literate readers are not the only ones insulted by dynamic equivalence Bible translations.

   In the urge to relieve allegedly inexpert readers from the need to make interpretive decisions, and to guard readers from misinterpretation, dynamic equivalence translator overlooked one important thing: in the overwhelming number of instances where these translators believed that they need to change, explain, or clarify the original, the original authors could have said it that way and chose not to. The psalmist had the linguistic resources to say (in Ps. 78:33) that God ended the days of the wicked “in futility” (NIV) or “in emptiness” (REB) or “in failure” (NEB) instead of saying that “their days vanish like a breath” (RSV, ESV, NRSV). At the heart of the dynamic equivalence experiment is the attempt to fix the assumed inadequacies of the Bible for modern readers. This maneuver is not an example of sophistication as opposed to naivete; it is instead and unwarranted affront to the original authors (an extension of the “what the author was trying to say” fallacy that has become so prevalent).

—Leland Ryken, Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation (Crossway, 2005), 68.

And let’s be clear: the “original author” receiving this “unwarranted affront” is none other than God himself.

If I relay a message inaccurately, does it matter how plainly I speak?

   Several ideas ordinarily cluster around the charge [that essentially literal translations are obscure or opaque]. One is the assumption that whenever an English translation is difficult or unclear, the fault can be assumed to lie with the translation and its philosophy rather than being a property of the original text. Related to this is the assumption that when a colloquial or modernized translation is judged by reading tests to be more easily grasped by the population at large, this means that translations that require a higher reading level are obscure.
   It is my belief that all modern translations are accessible to a lower reading level than traditional translations are. Not only has readability been elevated to a status all out of proportion to its legitimate place, but it has also been misrepresented. I have moved among people for whom readability is apparently the primary aim of English Bible translation, an error reinforced by advertising for what I will call “easy reading Bibles.” I will state my critique of the readability fallacy very succinctly: what good is readability if what the reader reads is not what the original text of the Bible says? If it is not what the original text says, the so-called readable translation has actually removed the Bible from a reader, not, as it is claimed, brought the Bible close to the reader. [bold type added]

—Leland Ryken, Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation (Crossway, 2005), 73–74.

While practitioners of dynamic equivalence translation attempt to remove difficulty from Bible reading, Ryken points out that difficulty is, and always has been, a natural quality of Bible study.

   Over against the claims of a naive modern audience that is in a special position in finding the Bible difficult, I incline to the view that there is much in the Bible that is inherently difficult and technical. Surely Anthony Nichols is correct when he writes, “One cannot escape the fact that the Bible contains many concepts and expressions which are difficult for the modern reader. There is no evidence that they were much less so for the original readers. They, too, had to cope with technical terminology, with thousands of OT allusions and Hebrew loan words, idioms and translation must have been very strange to them.”
   In a similar vein, Wayne Grudem pictures the situation thus: “Lest we think that understanding the Bible was somehow easier for first-century Christians than for us, it is important to realize that in many instances the New Testament epistles were written to churches that had large proportions of Gentile Christians. They were relatively new Christians who had no previous background in any kind of Christian society, and who had little or no understanding of the history and culture of Israel. The events of Abraham’s life . . . were as far in the past for them as the events of the New Testament are for us!”

—Leland Ryken, Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation (Crossway, 2005), 74–75.

Is it so unreasonable to expect difficulty in the study of an infinitely difficult subject? And if the difficulty is removed, has not the subject, by and large, also been removed?