Featured So You Want to Be a Bible Translator!

Moving right along, try my quiz:

Could You Be a Missionary Bible Translator?
Answer “Yes” or “No”

1. I messed with languages as a kid, confounding my family. Yes No

2. I took a language in high school and loved it. Yes No

3. I love thinking about definitions and meanings. Yes No

4. I could live in a foreign country and enjoy it. Yes No

5. I could spend at least six hours a day all week studying a foreign language, and love it.
Yes No

6. If I lived in a country with a language other than English, it would drive me nuts not being able to read the signs! Yes No

7. I laugh at myself when I make a mistake in speaking to someone. Yes No

8. I have watched a complete TV show in a foreign language, and wished I understood it. Yes No

9. I love witnessing to immigrants who don’t understand English well yet. Yes No

10. I enjoy looking up Greek and Hebrew Bible meanings in software. Yes No


Your Rating According to “Yes” Answers

0-2 "Yes" answers: Nothing but donuts and potato chips for you. Find your TV remote and snack. You could never be a missionary Bible translator. If you pray for missionary translators, make sure you don't learn too much about their work. You'd get scared and hide in the “Jokes” forum on the BB!

3-4 "Yes" answers: You need to get out more! Try visiting some immigrants in your town. You couldn't be a pioneer missionary, but you might be able to support one with prayer and money.

5-6 "Yes" answers: Don't visit any mission fields. You might get a burden, and then where would you be? You could be a home missionary, but might not be able to cross cultures and become a missionary translator.

7-8 "Yes" answers: Admit it, you could even eat a balut egg in the Philippines! Visit a foreign field and try the food and listen to the language. You have great possibilities!

9-10 "Yes" answers: Get ready, get set, go to Bible college and seminary to learn Greek and Hebrew, then get an MA in Bible Translation in our seminary or some other school that offers training. That way, you can hit the foreign field running!

 

Still, I enjoy interacting with you here on the Greek.

 

Here are the notes from a lecture I give about the qualifications of a Bible translator. Please note that the footnotes are at the end of the notes. Please note also that these notes will take two posts to get on the BB. Enjoy!

Qualifications for a Bible Translator
Neh. 8:8

INTRODUCTION: A “wannabe” is someone who wants to be important but does not have the right skills, training or talent. For Bible translators we do not need “wannabes,” but people who are gifted by God and totally committed to the task. One such “wannabe” wrote the United Bible Societies: “I would be so glad to help in the translating of the Bible, and so if you would send me a dictionary and grammar of some of these primitive languages, I would be happy to dedicate my spare time to the translation of the New Testament.”[1]

So, there are certain qualifications which a translator should have. Not every translator may have all of these qualifications. Some are more important than others. But we should think carefully about who should be a translator of the precious Word of God.

I. Spiritual Qualifications (Acts 6:1-3)
A. The translator is a helper to the church, and so is similar to the deacon. Therefore, these qualifications should apply.
B. Every member of a translation team should be a saved person, or the Holy Spirit will not guide him or her. That said, it is not unusual to use secular sources or unsaved people for guidance on particular semantic or syntactical difficulties.
C. The translator should be a spiritual person who deeply loves the Word of God and has daily devotions in it, and takes time to study it deeply, knowing that God gave the Bible by inspiration (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It is not a normal book.
D. The translator should know how to be led by the Holy Spirit, the translator’s Helper (John 16:13).
E. The translator should be called by God to the work.
F. There are no Scriptural prohibitions for a woman being a translator. The obvious caveat here is that if a translation team is also planting a church, the woman should not lead in that effort. A woman missionary translator has written:

Then one day I was checking 1 Timothy with Ama [her male translation partner]. We came to 1 Timothy 2:12 where Paul says to Timothy, “I do not permit a woman to teach…a man.” Ama never said a word; we just went on checking. But late that afternoon, when we were finished for the day, he asked me what we were going to study on Sunday. Assuming he was just curious, I was delighted to tell him. Then on Sunday morning, after the singing finished and before I could stand up, Ama rose and, nodding toward me, said, “My daughter here knows more about this than I do, but we found in the Bible where it says that women aren’t supposed to teach men, so I guess I have to be the one.”

My Balangao teaching career was over. Ama led the Balangao’s (sic) into church leadership.[2]

G. The translator must be a prayer warrior.
H. The translator must have a godly humility and willingness to listen to others.

II. Character Qualifications
A. A translator without good character will soon bog down and not be able to finish the task. Translating the Bible is hard work, and requires a deep level of commitment (Prov. 12:27).
B. Thus, perhaps the most important character qualification is a good work ethic. By the time the translator is finished with the New Testament, not to mention the Old Testament, he will have spent literally thousands of hours doing the work. A lazy person cannot accomplish this.
C. The translator should also be scrupulously honest. An honest translator refrains from interpreting the text if at all possible, but simply translates. However, there are times when interpretation is unavoidable.
1. The translator must never substitute his own ideas for what God has said. Therefore, paraphrasing a translation of God’s Word is wrong.
2. For example, the translator should seek to retain the ambiguity of the original language. If the writer of Scripture was ambiguous in a passage, it was for an important purpose. God’s Word often makes us think hard.
D. Again, the translator must be honest in his approach to other translations, if there are already Bible translations in the target language. Plagiarism is the sin of stealing, so the translator must be sure his work is his own, and must never copy verbatim other translations.
E. The Bible translator must never be a quitter. He or she must be totally committed to carrying the work through to the end. If God has called him or her to the task, the translator must finish the task with God’s help (Prov. 22:29, 1 Thess. 5:24).

 

III. Linguistic Qualifications
A. A gift for languages, if not formal training, is necessary (1 Cor. 12:28).
B. Sometimes a very hard worker with meager talents can become quite fluent in a foreign language. However, usually the best linguists are those with God-given talents in language.
C. Beyond normal language study, the Bible translator should do his or her own study of linguistics and translation theory.

IV. Scholarly Qualifications
A. A trained translator is the best translator. At a minimum, the translator should be highly trained in the target language if he is not a native speaker. A native speaker is definitely the best translator.
B. For example, it is virtually impossible for someone untrained in an Asian language to translate into an Asian language, even with a helper. At best, a linguist without training in the target language can only give advice concerning the original language, making him a translation consultant and not one of the translators.
C. Furthermore, the translator ought to be well-trained in the original language, koine Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old Testament. Even if the translator is translating from the English Bible, as is sometimes necessary, they should be well-trained in the English language. Remember the famous book by Portuguese men José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino, English As She Is Spoke.
D. The translator ought to get some training in how to translate. There are now more opportunities than ever in this area for fundamentalists:
1. Baptist Bible Translator’s Institute (BBTI)
2. WorldView Team Meetings
3. BJU Missionary Linguistic courses in May and June
4. Bearing Precious Seed (Milford, OH) Bible Publishing Summit
5. Baptist Theological Seminary’s MA in Bible Translation

V. Cultural and Sociological Qualifications
A. The cultural aspect is very important in translating. The translator must know intimately the culture of the target language to avoid misunderstandings, because language and culture are greatly intertwined. “One translator found that what she had thought meant ‘sinners’ actually meant ‘fat people,’ for the tones of the language were almost the exact opposite of the tune.”[3]
B. The translator should be well acquainted with the culture of the target language in order to understand the differences: the language, the customs, the social structure, the religions. Therefore, the best translator is the native speaker. “A missionary among the Tarahumaras was trying to obtain the word ‘jump.’ He acted it out by jumping around the room. The people responded with an expression; so he quickly wrote it down, only to find out later that it meant, ‘What is wrong with you?’”[4]
C. One trap is what is called “taboo words.” A taboo word is “a word known to speakers but avoided in some, most, or all forms or contexts of speech, for reasons of religion, decorum, politeness, etc. Thus in some societies the word for ‘death’ is taboo, and is accordingly replaced in most forms of speech by a metaphor, euphemism, or some other figurative or roundabout expression.”[5] We will have a lecture on taboo words later.

VI. The Authority of the Translator
A. The authority for translating the Bible comes from the fact that the translator is a priest.
B. Since in the church age we believers are priests (1 Peter 2:5, 9, Rev. 1:6, 5:10, 20:6), we have a responsibility from God to preserve His Word by: having our own copy (like the kings of Israel were supposed to in Deut. 17:18), hiding it in our hearts (Ps. 119:11), sharing it with others, and translating it.
C. In the Old Testament it was the job of the priests to preserve the Word of God in the form of a special copy (Deut. 17:18; see also Ezek. 44:8, Mal. 2:7) in the Temple (2 Kings 22:10-11), and in the ark of God (Deut 31:26).

CONCLUSION: Not all Christians—in fact, very few—can be Bible translators. Only those who have the right qualifications can do so, and only those who have been called of God to this precious task should do so. Those who accept the challenge will be given divine help, and will rejoice in how God has blessed their efforts.

[1] Eugene Nida, God’s Word in Man’s Language (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 56.
[2] Joanne Shetler with Patricia Purvis, And the Word Came with Power (Portland: Multnomah, 1992), 87.
[3] Eugene Nida, Bible Translating, rev. (London: United Bible Societies, 1961), 17.
[4] Ibid., 4.
[5] P. H. Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 2007), 400.

 

Good points, Robb. However, my thought is, how many of those who are well-trained in the original languages stay home when maybe they should be out translating somewhere!

The English language has far more resources, scholars, books, etc., than any other language. My son recently taught a D.Min. level class by Zoom in India, and was disappointed at the low training the students have. But it's not their fault, totally. The scholars and resources are in America.

"For many are called, but few are chosen" "Matt. 22:14). It looks like a Greek pun there between "called" (kletos) and "chosen" (eklektos). Those who are called should also be chosen, in other words. And I know that this refers to salvation, but I think there is an application to missions also.

 

That is correct. It's quite well done, except that it uses Western format for the text (horizontal, left to right) instead of Japanese (vertical, right to left), and that's odd. Some advertising does that, but it's hard for a Japanese to read a book that way.

Our Japanese NT has some footnotes, and the final editor has put some helps in, but it would be great to do a study version some day.

English speakers have dozens of reference Bibles. The rest of the world--sadly, almost none.

Have a wonderful Christmas!