that it truly used the "language of the people" so that it could be understood by anyone; thus, colloquialisms and every-day expressions are employed at length;
that it communicated the original intent of the writer (for what it can be known from biblical scholarship) instead of focusing on reproducing the text word-by-word (it is a "dynamic translation" that sometimes borders on paraphrasing);
that some of the original syntax be kept, rather than smoothed to obtain "beautiful English", in order to make the hearers feel both the poetic aspects of the text and the cultural distance of its context.