One day Uncle Miya brought me a very interesting translation project. The son of an Australian missionary to China had written his father's biography and wanted it translated into Japanese. I'm not sure it would have ever sold in Japan, but nevertheless Uncle Miya took on the project and wanted me to compare his Japanese version with the English original, which I was glad to do.
The father had been taken prisoner in the 1940's by Chinese communist soldiers, who were really nothing more than brigands. Their modus operandi was to capture a foreigner and wait for a ransom from the person's homeland. In this case the thugs were out of luck, since mission boards do not normally have a lot of money. Therefore, the communists had noting better to do than keep the missionaries prisoner, hoping against hope that someone would dig up some ransom money. It was a fascinating story. Well, the missionaries were eventually released, so the story ended well.
Uncle Miya translated several chapters and did a good job. However, when he sent those chapters to the Australian, the man asked other Japanese to read and evaluate them. Now this is something you must never do after you have engaged someone to do your translation. Furthermore, this was just the first draft, which always has errors. At any rate, the Australian "fired" Uncle Miya, saying that other Japanese had told him the work was terrible. (He was doing wthe work for free.) It was not, it was a good job, actually. What was the motive for the critics? It could have been jealousy, it could have been a desire to do the job instead of Uncle Miya, I don't know. Uncle Miya was devastated. This was a huge insult and loss of face, and so unneeded!
Here is the takeaway. Languages are very complex, and few are qualified to do translation. You must know both the original and the target language not just well, but very well. This is why I have little patience for "wannabes" here on the BB. If you don't know Greek or Hebrew or even Aramaic, don't come on here pretending to be an expert. Or, if you don't know those languages, and don't even know any other foreign language, meaning you don't have any experience whatsoever in translating, don't come on here like a know-it-all and expect respect from me or any other genuine linguist or translator.
And above all, don't write a book telling people how to translate the Bible if you have no qualifications, like H. D. Williams did with his book, Word-For-Word Translating of The Received Texts. I stand by my one star Amazon review of it, even though Williams and the other KJVO types were so offended the personal attack against me is still on the DBS website.
