This question matters a great deal more than people realize. In the English speaking world, most things we come across were written in English to begin with. Few people understand the challenge of translating across languages.

Take for example the French phrase “au revior.” What does that mean? Most people would say it means “goodbye.” Some might say it means, “See you later” or “So long.” All of these are correct translations of “au revoir” but each one is different. It is the same way with the Bible. There are many “correct” ways of translating the Bible, you need to find the one that speaks to you most clearly.
In addition to the translators’ word choice is the question of whether the translator is trying to capture what was actually said in the original language – this is usually a word for word translation – or what was meant in the original language, which must stray from a word for word translation in order to get at the meaning behind the words.

Take the phrase “au revior” again. A word for word translation of this phrase is something like, “until the next time we see each other.” But is that what it really means? It means, “Goodbye” but then again, depending on the context it could mean “See ya!” which is a little different than “goodbye.”
Perhaps the main factor in the whole business of Bible translation is the sheer difficulty of reading ancient Hebrew and Greek – the primary languages in which the Bible was written. Keep in mind, there were no dictionaries in the ancient world, so we can’t simply look up difficult words to see what the author meant. Meaning is guessed at by looking at how the word is used in many different contexts. Compounding the difficulty is the fact that ancient languages like these were often written without any punctuation and even without spaces between the words.

Because of all of these difficulties in translation, it is hard to say that any one translation is right or wrong, though people will make those judgments. The important thing is to find one that is generally regarded as trustworthy and which speaks to you personally.

It is a good idea, also, to read the translator’s preface to your Bible to find out how they approached the task of translation.