Featured Books on Bible Translation

Another major difficulty, lined up with this one, is choosing the proper grammatical forms in the target language. Examples: the Greek perfect tense has no parallel in Japanese; Japanese has not future tense, but uses the present tense without a secondary verb of possibility (hard to explain); the main thing in Greek verbs is verbal aspect, but Japanese emphasizes time in the tenses, as does English; Japanese does not have infinitives and participles.

 

What can I say about the book by H. D. Williams, Word-For-Word Translating of The Received Text? I've actually already said too much. My Amazon review (one star) made him very angry at me, and he wrote a scathing personal attack in response, still on the "Bible for Today" website of D. A. Waite, even though Williams is no longer with the Dean Burgon Society run by Waite. (For the record, nothing I said in the review was a personal attack on him; just a bad review of his book.) I was then advised by a friend to answer his attack here on the BB, and I did so; maybe you can find it somewhere a few years ago.

In a nutshell, here you go. Williams thinks himself fit to write a book on how to translate in spite of not having any training in the original languages of Scripture, not being fluent in any foreign language, and not ever having translated anything. This is contrary to what he himself says in the book: that he “would never attempt to translate the Scriptures into another language without the proper experience and training in a specific culture and language-group for many years (viz. 15-20 years)” (p. 8), and, "The work of translating God’s words should not be attempted by inexperienced individuals” (p. 7). But I guess it's okay to tell people how to do it if you don't have the experience of doing it.

At some place in the book he also claimed not to be telling Bible translators how to translate. However, in the last chapter he has "77 Criteria for Translators" (pp. 229-239.

My opinion? Worst. Translation. Book. Ever.

 

Only too true!

 

The book is designed to teach missionary Bible translators how to translate, so it's a different issue than the KJV per se. KJVO advocates are now beginning to advocate for perfect missionary translations in various languages (more later on this).

Williams joined with others to found the "William Carey Bible Society," which is now defunct--they apparently did not find any missionaries to come under them. Ironically, their website was taken over for a time by a Japanese yakuza gang, who gave instructions there on security precautions for their nefarious practices! I kid you not. It is now on the market for anyone to use.

 

If you are interested in the history of Bible translation, Calvin George has written an excellent book about an important translation, The History of the Reina-Valera 1960 Spanish Bible.

For my part, I've written a history of Bible translation in Japan, which I will upload here for your reading enjoyment.

 

Only too often.

As a side note, most secular translation studies theories nowadays research how translators translate (descriptive) rather than telling them how they should translate (prescriptive).

 

Here is one last book on translation, after which I may post some great biographies of translators. (I do have other books, but I'm not sure how helpful they would be.)

A Practical Theology of Bible Translating, by Steve Combs, just came out this year. A friend mentioned it to me, so I ordered it, since that subject is right down my alley and I lecture on it. Combs is the Assistant director of Bearing Precious Seed Global, a Bible society. So, there is a strong KJVO element to the book.

I commend Dr. Combs for actually considering the theology of Bible translation, something few others have done, and DE types deny is possible. In particular, he applies his doctrine of inspiration, and he also lists the times the Bible translates itself, such as "Immanuel" meaning "God with us."

Interestingly enough, Dr. Combs not only believes that the KJV is inerrant, he believes it is possible to produce a missionary translation that is perfect! However, he does not tell us how that happens. Theologically, the only way to produce perfection on earth is through divine intervention, meaning a miracle. Providence does not produce perfection. However, this book defines providential preservation as meaning, "God has promised to miraculously preserve forever all of His Word, His Words, and all His teaching with the words in which they are expressed" (p. 42). However, this confuses miracles and providence, not the same thing. Here is a theologian's definition of providence: ""The providence of God means the continuing action of God in preserving his creation and guiding it toward his intended purposes" (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed., p. 412).

One thing he misses in the theology area is the priesthood of the believer. In the dispensation of law, the priests were the ones charged with the earthly preservation of Scripture. In this dispensation, the priests are all believers. Therefore we each have a responsibility to preserve the Word of God: study, teaching, translating, exegeting, textual criticism,physically preserving (printing and distributing), etc.

I found another big negative in the book. The research is awful, and the end notes are awful. He quotes Wikipedia over and over, and that's an awful source for scholarly or even commendable amateur work. When he disagrees with someone (Westcott and Hort and many others), he invariably gets quotes from secondary sources which are usually in his ballpark in the KJVO position. That's not fair to the person being opposed. Such quotes are often out of context, cherry-picked to fit the position of the one quoting. Again, the formatting of his end notes is. It makes me wonder how in the world he got his degrees if he cannot properly cite sources!

 

The secular theory I believe resonates most with Bible translators is called skopos theory. Skopos is the Greek word for "goal" or "target," occurring only once in the NT in Phil. 3:14 ("mark" in the KJV). The original book written about this theory is Towards a General Theory of Translational Action (1984), by German scholars Katharina Reis and Hands M. Vermeer. The subtitle is "Skopos Theory Explained." The book was finally translated into English in 2013 by Christiane Nord.

This is an excellent book on translation theory and I highly recommend it. However, I must say that it is pretty technical, so if you've never done any translation work and don't know any foreign languages, you'll probably get all turned around and bamboozled.

Nord wrote her own book on the theory in 1997, Translating as a Purposeful Activity. I highly recommend this book also, or anything else by Nord--though you might have to sell your car to buy it.

Ms. Nord actually has translated the NT into German. A few years ago, I had some very profitable correspondence with her, and found her to be gracious and helpful (helpful to me, not her ).

 

For the rest of the thread I'd like to introduce some biographies that have blessed and/or intrigued me. You can glean a a lot from those who have gone on before.

First of all, there is Fascinated by Languages, by Eugene Nida. This is the autobiographical account of Nida's huge experience and influence as a Bible translation consultant for the United Bible Societies. I think it is an essential book for understanding Nida and his thinking and methodology. However, Unfortunately, this runs for over $100 dollars.

Nida is a good writer, and includes many humorous and interesting stories of his experiences around the globe. Here's an example. On a trip to Russia, when he checked into his hotel he was asked where his companion was. When he said he was traveling alone, they pointed out that his reservation was under two names: Eugene Nida and Albert Linguist. They had misread: Nida, Eugene Albert; Linguist.

By the way, on that trip to Russia the Russian Orthodox linguists objected to his position on the Greek texts. NIda wrote that "the most distinguished of the scholars finally concluded by saying, 'But why do you waste so much time and money trying to decide what is the correct the correct text. Our Holy Father in Moscow has already told us what is the right text to follow.' And of course this was the traditional Byzantine text, the least satisfactory of all" (p. 59). Well, the least satisfactory to Nida, anyway.

 

Eugene Nida's friend Philip Stine wrote a book about Nida's ministry, Let the Words Be Written. It's a puff piece, hagiography, but still very interesting, and essential for understanding who Nida was.

Interesting quotes:
"Nida chose the term 'dynamic equivalence' t responsible for translations to shock people" (p. 41).'

"Nida felt that the term 'dynamic equivalence' had been misunderstood and was partly responsible for translations like The Living Bible" (p. 51).

"For translators who believe that not only were the thoughts of the Bible inspired by God through the Holy Spirit but also the words themselves, a translation approach such as Nida's contradicts their theology because it puts a premium on the message rather than the form" (p. 59).

"Nida demanded that the very best scholars in the Catholic Church be assigned to work with him" ([p. 124).

 

That's the natural conclusion.

 

Jesus Led Me All the Way, by Margaret Stringer, is a wonderful read about the dear lady who translated the New Testament into the Citak and Asmat languages of Papua, Indonesia (previously called Irian Jaya). I was privileged to meet her several years ago at a Bible translation conference, and bought her book after hearing her testimony. She felt called to be a missionary at the tender age of 12, and never lost that vision. This is a fascinating story of how a stone age jungle tribe which had no word for love found Christ.

At the end of the book, upon her retirement from the mission field, she says a poignant thing: "I knew that when I came home I would feel intimidated, and would not know what was expected of me. I would not know what people were talking about when they discussed current news and politics. I would not really know my own family members because I had been out of their lives for 40 years. They would not be able to understand where I had come from, and what it had meant to me to leave 'my people.' In some ways, the idea of returning was scarier than when I first went to the field" (p. 222).

This reverse culture shock is much how we felt when we retired from the field of Japan in 2014.