Featured Ways of Doing a Translation

Before translating the NT I thought I was good in Japanese and Greek and knew the NT pretty well. Wow, did I learn better about all of those things!

You can lead a horse to water but....

 

Before describing more ways a translation may be done, let me say that the first way is the most common for the mission fields of the world. A committee may be formed by interested missionaries and nationals, and then may meet regularly (weekly at a minimum) to work on the new translation. However, the committee method is rare on the mission fields of the world.

Why? In the first place, missionaries don't get big bucks for translation efforts, so they have to do the work with only their missionary support. Several years before starting the translation effort I'm doing now I was part of such a translation committee, but we only met once a month. The men were simply too busy, and we lived too far apart to meet more regularly. Needless to say, this effort went nowhere.

In the second place, there is not a plethora of possible translators among missionaries. Most missionaries are fairly good linguists in their field's language, but others barely get by. Of those who are good linguists, many remember little of their seminary Greek and Hebrew, and often the missionary has not even been to grad school, so only has two years of college Greek, most of which he's forgotten. As for the national pastors, they are even less likely to know Greek and Hebrew. Very few mission fields have anywhere near the level of seminary training that English speaking countries have.

More later on the ways missionary translations are conducted in various differing cultures, both third world and first world.

 

I checked this link out, since it is relevant to the discussion, and downloaded the "Our Word" software.

Here is what Van quoted from Gross' article, which I read through. Frankly, this is hype. Gross is pushing the software and so he overstated some things.

His statement that we need to "take it (translation) out of the hands of experts" is pure hype. Having looked at the software, I guarantee you that it does not allow people with no language expertise to suddenly become translators. Even with this software, the translator must have full understanding--in other words, be expert in--two languages. Without complete fluency in two languages, any translation done with this software will be full of errors. As the old computer programmers used to say, "GIGO" (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

I don't plan to use the "Our Word" software in my translation work. I can accomplish the same thing with the software I already have. Software, including this translation software that Gross is pushing, is only a tool. I regularly use five different Bible software packages, a Japanese English PC dictionary and two Japanese word processors. They are only tools. Without my knowledge of Greek and Japanese they would be useless.

 

Bibloi 8.0 is my high end package, and I love the Fribergs' lexicon in it as well as the parsing features. PowerBible has an excellent comparison feature and I love their search capability. My Japanese Bible program is called J-Bible, and is somewhat limited, but has a good comparison feature. I sometimes use e-Sword, I sometimes use the i-Believe Bible for ISBE. I use the MS Japanese-English dictionary. I use the Ichi Taro Japanese word processor because I love how it does things, but have to save in Japanese MS Word format since no one else uses Ichi Taro.

P. S. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I occasionally use an old package called Seedmaster.

 

This is basic translation work. We do this all the time.

 

I have a Japanese NT done by what might be called the "Cooperative Committee Method." It is called the 新約聖書委員会訳, or the "New Testament Committee Translation." In the forward we learn that the "NT Committee" in question is a group of men who like to study the NT together, and it includes church-goers and non-church goers, Catholics and Protestants. It is not only an ecumenical translation, it is an unapologetically liberal one, dividing the Pauline Epistles into two sections: "Pauline Epistles" and "Epistles Purported to Be by Paul."

The method of translation was to divide the books of the NT up and determine translators for each book from their committee. Thus, Sato translated the Synoptics, Kobayashi translated John, Arai translated Acts, and so forth. Two of the translators are listed as "Responsibility Editors," but it is not plain what that means. All of the translators are Japanese, but their particular positions or qualifications are not listed.

This method produced some unusual results. Apparently no effort was made to produce agreement from book to book in vocabulary, etc. So for example, in some books baptisma/baptizo is the word we Baptists use for immersion (浸礼), and in others it is the word sprinkling churches use (洗礼, "washing ceremony").

All in all, this is not at all a translation I recommend to any Japanese or anyone else, but the committee method used is interesting, as is the fact that it was done completely by Japanese.

 

The most difficult way of producing a translation is doing a tribal translation. This method goes all the way back to Ulfilas, a missionary and Bible translator from the 4th century who translated from Greek into Gothic. Ulfilas probably learned the language growing up, but since the Goth language had no written form he had to invent an alphabet for it.

In the 19th century, Adoniram Judson translated the Bible into Burmese. The language already had an alphabet and literature, but Judson had to write his own grammar and dictionary! He then used national informants to produce his translation.

The process that must take place when a missionary linguist translates the Bible into an unwritten tribal language is more complicated than either of these examples. Before producing an alphabet, the missionary must first determine the spoken structure of the language. He (or she) does this by mapping the phonemes. A phoneme is a basic unit of sound. Each language has its own set of phonemes, which then make morphemes.

A morpheme is a basic unit of meaning. It may or may not be a word. For example, "change" is a word that is also a morpheme, but "-ed" is a morpheme that is not a word, yet has meaning. Therefore, "changed" consists of two morphemes. The missionary linguist must map the morphemes of the language, after which he may finally work on his dictionary.

The missionary linguist must then map the grammar of the language. At this point, realize that there is no such thing as a "primitive language." A tribal language can have a very complicated grammar. The missionary must listen carefully to the tribal language, learning it from scratch. At the same time he must develop an alphabet and promote literacy so that the people can learn to read the Bible.

As the missionary learns the language he can record various traditions, legends and stories, which help with the dictionary and grammar. He can also begin telling Bible stories, which the tribal people will respond to, thus helping the missionary to build a vocabulary for the eventual Bible translation. (To this point I'm simplifying quite a bit.) These stories can then be written down to teach the people to read and write.

Let's say that after a few years the missionary linguist has been able to translate the book of Mark. He then has to check the translation, first of all with the tribal members to make sure they understand it. Another way to check the translation is by doing what is called a back translation. This is when the missionary retranslates his book of Mark back into English so it can be checked by translation consultants.

The process is long and complicated, as you can see. I greatly admire the missionary linguist, these heroes of the faith who live in primitive conditions while reducing a language to writing for the first time in history, and providing a tribal people with the Word of God so that they can receive God's precious Son and eternal salvation.

 

In recent years a new way of producing a translation has arisen: the Internet Bible. The primary example of this method is called the Net Bible. It was produced completely on the Internet. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the base translation was done by twenty scholars, and then qualified people were allowed to suggest changes or corrections. This means in effect that the Net (New English Translation) Bible was produced by a huge, volunteer Committee. At any rate, the NET appears to be the first Bible produced completely on the Internet. It has now been printed in hard copy like conventional Bibles.

A NET Bible has also been produced in the Chinese language by the same principles. (See https://bible.org/chinese.) It is to be hoped that the producers of this version are missionary-minded and plan to produce new Bibles in languages that do not have them. (The Chinese language has quite a few versions already.)

A similar Japanese effort, perhaps inspired by the NET Bible, is called the Denmo Bible (電網聖書, meaning "Electric Net Bible") is available on the Internet at: http://www.cozoh.org/denmo/. This NT was ostensibly produced from the WEB (World English Bible, based on the Majority Text ) and compared to various Japanese Bibles. Unfortunately, this effort stalled and the NT was never finished, with none of the OT being translated.

The translator of the Denmo, whoever it might be (the site doesn't list him or her), invites people to correct and offer renderings, but when I tried to do so years ago I got no response. My input was that the Japanese potential verb form was often used for the Greek future tense, so: "This same Jesus...may come in like manner..." (Acts 1:11). This Bible has a good start, but could use many corrections.

 

Unless another method occurs to me, this will be the last method I discuss. It is what might be called the linguist led method of producing a translation.

An important example of the linguist led translation is that of Martin Luther. Some may think that Luther produced a one-man translation, but that is not so. He led the translation, but freely used translation partners to produce the highest level of German prose possible. For example, he wrote, "In translating the book of Job, Master Philip, Aurogallus and I have taken such pains that we have sometimes scarcely translated three lines in four days" ("An Open Letter on Translating," at http://www.bible-researcher.com/luther01.html).

This method is often used on the mission field when translating into a well-known language which may already have translations of the Bible. It is the method we are using here in Japan. I did the base translation, then God led me to a Japanese Christian linguist for the 2nd draft. "Uncle Miya" Miyakawa has been an incredible treasure, and I listen carefully to everything he says.

I have the final say, though. Uncle Miya has often reminded me of this when I show indecision (which is often). Why? I'm the linguist in NT Greek, I know the manners and customs of the Bible, and I have the library of reference books to help in semantic, grammatical and cultural difficulties. For example, it is up to me to tell Uncle Miya what a centurion is, what a Greek perfect tense does, and what the core meaning of logos is.

Having said this, God has led together a great team to keep me in line. By no means does the missionary linguist fly solo. If he or she is wise, he will pray often and then watch the Providence of God as He leads together the team. In particular, the linguist will need national partners who can help him with the semantics, culture and necessary style of the target language. The missionary linguist may have a good handle on the grammar of the target language (if he is a real linguist), but semantics and style are much more difficult.

There you have it in a nutshell. There are many different ways of producing a translation, some better than others. But God can and does use each of them. Think of the faithful translators next time you study your Bible!

 

Thank you! :wavey: