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Introduction
Many have endeavored to produce an English translation that is "faithful to the original Greek text." In reality, they have all produced translations that are faithful to the English at the expense of the Greek, focusing on how to translate into the best English possible, with the tradeoff being how literal, or at least faithful, to the original Greek they can still remain after doing so. Yet there is and can be no such thing as a "literal, word for word" translation. The set of words in each language do not have a one to one correspondence to each other, nor does the grammar, nor do the composition and style rules map. My translation will not accomplish such an impossible feat either, nor even to my own satisfaction, but it will take the additional step of being much more faithful to the Greek, sacrificing proper English grammar, punctuation, composition, and style, bringing out every word, nearly every grammatical construct, and every meaningful subtlety in the original text, only endeavoring to still keep the text readable and understandable in English. And that is the goal of what I am calling "Garth's Hyper-literal Translation," which I will abbreviate "GHT." It is not like any translation you have seen before. I focus on how they said it, rather than how we would say it. As much as possible, I avoid interpretation ("it says that but means this") but instead say what it says the way it says it. Where others have fallen short due to an English language mindset, which they impose upon the Greek, I have much more closely followed the sense and flow of the Greek language. That is why it is so very awkward in English. It will take some getting used to, to read it this way. But if you don't know the Greek, this will get you the closest to it, and those who do know Greek may question the virtue of being so "hyper-literal," yet they will have to acknowledge that it brutally accomplishes that objective.

At first it will seem that the GHT is complicated, and that is because the English is so very awkward. But after a while readers will get used to the flow, recognize the patterns, and see that I have massively simplified the translation of the underlying Greek, producing a translation that has an unprecedented concordance and consistency, minimizing interpretation and ambiguity about what the underlying Greek says, making it so highly predictable that one could almost back-translate it into the original Greek words and grammar.

Notation, punctuation, capitalization
Every word, or construction between spaces, including possible hyphens and slash characters, or as demarcated within underscore characters, maps to one, single, corresponding word in the original Greek text, unless it is in square brackets. I separately translate every single word in the Greek, something that no other translation does. I use square brackets to denote something I have added for clarity that is not in the original text. An [ing] on a participle means it is an aorist or future participle, not a present participle. As noted in more detail below, I use curly brackets to denote dative and genitive cases and a colon to denote third-person imperatives. I liberally use hyphens to bring out etymological/morphemes, compound words, and single words from the original that do not have a single English correspondence but can be expressed using multiple English words and/or English morphemes, and underscore to insert separate original words into a hyphenated sequence (usually "_not_"). I use the slash character where I need to convey that a word could be either one or the other English word, or a sense from of both or something in between, but these are alternatives and not additive, as I am not compounding those meanings as I do with hyphens. Since interrogatives are not punctuated in the Greek, and are not even explicit, I let the text flow as in the original and insert question mark characters in square brackets. Beyond that, punctuation is simply a best-effort attempt to follow English convention while prioritizing the Greek flow. There is little to no punctuation in the original Greek text, and not in the English sense or English convention. I capitalize proper names as in English, but there is no capitalization scheme in Greek. Verse number placement adheres to the convention originated by the Geneva Bible.

Audience
This translation provides no accommodation for sentimentality, liturgical recitation, or religious traditions of men. It is for serious bible study for those who do not know Greek (yet), or who do know it but are not yet able to easily sight read it in the way they are able to sight read English at a glance. Anyone quoting it for the benefit of a wider audience will, in many cases, need to adapt it to flow better in conventional English, but it provides a better starting point for doing so than going about comparing multiple conventional translations and reading commentaries. If you want to know what the original says, as close to the original as possible, translating every original word and every original grammatical construct, at the expense of nice English, yet still reasonably understandable in English, then this is the translation for you. However, it is still a translation, not the God-breathed original, no translation can exactly match the original, and you are still responsible as a serious student of the Bible to learn the original language.

Have I put this translation out of reach of some segment of the masses? For certain, that will be the case. Various popular English translations target audiences ranging roughly from the third grade level (e.g. NCV and NIrV) to fourth or fifth grade (e.g. The Message) to eighth grade (e.g. NIV) to tenth grade (e.g. ESV) to eleventh grade (e.g. NASB) reading comprehension level; I would say that my "GHT" assumes a high school graduate level of reading comprehension (by 1960's/1970's academic standards, not today's), because of the awkward and unconventional English, certainly much worse than reading the KJV. But then, the aforementioned translations and so many others are still available, and will continue to be available, if you want something for casual reading and/or recitation.

Certainly, there will be passages of scripture, especially with Paul's writings, which, as Peter said in 2 Peter 3:16, are δυσνοητα "difficult-mind/thought-ive[i.e. hard to understand/comprehend]." My remedy is not to gloss over and (over)simplify to make for nice, easy-reading English, but to say it as the scripture says it, leaving the reader to labor through and figure it out for himself, rather than resigning and deferring to an assumed state of enlightenment on the part of translators interpreting and distilling it down for easy reading, losing original detail as a result.