Lénart de Regt studied Semitic Languages and General Linguistics at Leiden University and received the following degrees from 1981 to 1988: B.A. (candidaat) Semitic Languages; M.A. (doctorandus) General Linguistics, with emphasis on Hebrew syntax and Old Testament textual criticism and exegesis; Dr. (Hebrew Linguistics).
His first full-time research position was in the Hebrew Department of Leiden University for the Netherlands Organisation for Pure Research (1985-1987), in preparation for his doctoral dissertation. After an interlude in military service as a translator from Russian he was appointed as Researcher and later Assistant Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam (1990-2000), where he taught Biblical Hebrew, Descriptive Linguistics and Bible Translation in the Faculties of Arts and Theology to Dutch and international students and coordinated the Bible Translation study programmes. From 1999 to 2001 he was the Secretary of the Dutch and Belgian Old Testament Society (Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap).
Initially part-time from 1998 and then full-time from 2000 he has worked with the United Bible Societies as translation consultant and coordinator of the translation consultants in Europe (including Russia) and the Middle East, and currently as Global Translation Advisor – conducting and coordinating translation training courses and providing translation consultancy to a wide range of Bible translation teams and translation team managers. From 2003 to 2008 he was the Chair of the Bible Translation Section of the Society of Biblical Literature.
He has co-directed doctoral dissertations at the Free University of Amsterdam and at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Strasbourg, France.
Dr. de Regt published A Parametric Model for Syntactic Studies of a Textual Corpus, Demonstrated on the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 1-30 (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 24. 1988) and Participants in Old Testament Texts and the Translator: Reference Devices and their Rhetorical Impact (Studia Semitica Neerlandica 39. 1999). He co-edited Literary Structure and Rhetorical Strategies in the Hebrew Bible (Van Gorcum / Eisenbrauns, 1996). He was the editor of Canon and Modern Bible Translation in Interconfessional Perspective (Istanbul: UBS / Bible Society in Turkey, 2006, distributed by Eisenbrauns). He co-authored A Translator’s Handbook on Numbers (to be published in the United Bible Societies Handbook Series). He has also published numerous articles in the fields of Biblical Hebrew and Bible Translation.