Featured Translators Down Through the Ages

I just got my copy in the mail. Looks really good. Thanks for the input!

 

Somewhere in a restricted access country is a remarkable young translator I know. He is translating the Bible into an Asian language which has about 100 dialects. No kidding! He has chosen the classical version of the language for his target text because that is the dialect most used to communicate by the people groups that speak this language. Normally we would not recommend this approach--translating into a classical language--because such can be very difficult to understand, like classical Japanese or High Wenli Chinese (a language for scholars). However, this is the right choice for his translation effort.

A brilliant computer coder, he has also produced excellent computer software that helps translators keep up with each other: what word in the target language is to be used for a particular word in the source language, what grammatical form in the target language is suitable for a transformation from Greek or Hebrew syntax, etc. You don't know this man, but they certainly know him in Heaven!

Another young man I've met who is in a limited access country is working on a translation for a mountain people group spread across several countries which has never, ever been reached with the Gospel. I'll not say any more than this about him, but I truly admire his dedication and sacrifice. You have no idea what hardships he is going through to reach those people!

 

Very often those who are loudest about Bible translation have never really done it (especially here on the BB). However, Christiane Nord, a leading German scholar of secular translation theory has done her own translation of the New Testament. (I believe it was the whole NT.) Born in 1943, she has a PhD in "Romance Studies." Her specialty is skopos (Greek for goal or target) theory, which has to do with translating dependent on the goals of the translation. I would say she is the leading scholar on this theory, since both of the inventors of the theory have passed on: Katharina Reiss and Hans Vermeer.

Dr. Nord is the translator of the seminal book on this theory: Towards a General Theory of Translational Action. She has also written her own book on it: Translation as a Purposeful Activity. Both of these books are well worth reading--but they are quite technical.

I have corresponded with Dr. Nord, and found her to be both gracious and brilliant. When I asked for more information about the theory years ago, she answered right away and sent me a couple of articles she had written. (By the way, well-known scholars are usually very diligent about answering email. Don't be afraid to try!)

Look here on the BB for a thread I did on this subject five years ago, along with a link on my son's blog to an essay I wrote about the theory: A Skopos Version of John 17.

 

Here are some quotes from Dr. Nord's book:

Christiane Nord defines brief: "Brief: Definition of the communicative purpose for which the translation is needed. The ideal brief provides explicit or implicit information about the intended target-text function (s), the target-text addressee(s), the medium over which it will be transmitted, the prospective place and time and, if necessary, motive of production or reception of the text" (Translating as a Purposeful Activity, p. 137).

"The Skopos of the translation determines the form of equivalence required for an adequate translation" (ibid, 36).

"For a word-for-word translation, where the purpose is a faithful reproduction of the words and structures of the source text, the translator chooses, one by one, the target-language words and structures corresponding exactly to those of the source-language with regard to meaning and, if possible, style" (ibid, 36).

"If a documentary translation reproduces the source text rather literally but adds the necessary explanations about the source culture or some peculiarities of the source language in footnotes or glossaries, we may speak of philological or learned translation. This form is used frequently in the translation of ancient texts (such as Homer), in Bible translation or in translations from distant cultures" (ibid, 49).

 

Timothy Friberg is a Bible translator in Southeast Asia, and has done a number translations in different languages as I understand it. he is a linguist with a PhD from the U. of Minnesota. He is also a Greek scholar, being the author along with his wife Barbara and Neva Miller of an Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament. I use his definitions quite often in my lectures, though I use the analytical lexicon by Maurice Robinson and Mark House in my own translation work. (I translate a verse every morning in devotions--what a blessing!) For a shorter lexicon, the definitions are very helpful.

 

One of the most amazing missionaries I've ever met (and I've known many) is Margaret Stringer, a missionary translator now retired after 40 years in the jungles of Papua, Indonesia (formerly Irian Jaya). For a fascinating read, get her book Jesus Led Me All the Way. (On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Led-Me...esus+led+me+all+the+way&qid=1608651377&sr=8-1)

From the age of 12, she was totally dedicated and longing to be a missionary. After she grew up, the Lord sent her to work with the Mimika tribe in Amar, a somewhat civilized area of the country. She then went on to translate the New Testament into the language of the Citak tribe. Here is what she wrote about their language: "The Citak language has a very fascinating and extremely complicated verbal system. Included in the verb are the tense, mode, time of day, subject, object, benefactive, habitual indicator, durative indicator, indirect relating suffic, causative, etc." (p. 202).

When I heard her speak, she told of being lowered from a helicopter into the village of a tribe of cannibals. Fortunately for her, they only ate men! I believe that story is told in her other book, here: https://www.amazon.com/Cannibalism-Christianity-Vakabuis-Story/dp/0977893693/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&qid=1608652898&refinements=p_27:Margaret+Stringer&s=books&sr=1-2&text=Margaret+Stringer

Here are a couple of other quotes from the first book mentioned.

"We talk a lot about surrendering to do God's will. I believe that we should be standing in line hoping and praying that Christ will choose us to do something special for Him" (p. 35).

"In order to effectively learn a different language one has to be willing to be laughed at and to make an absolute idiot of oneself. I admit that I was good at that" (p. 63; I can identify!). Once she told the people that Jesus had a tail, meaning to say a physical body after His resurrection.

You simply have to buy her book!

 

Check out "Betsy" in post #34. Here is a picture of me with a man from the Muslim people group she is translating for.

 

Here I am in Africa training translators. We worked through much of 1 John in Pidgin. Unfortunately, this effort is on pause due to a civil war and various other factors, but someday....

 

Here is a photo of a NT translation committee I worked with for a short while in 1995. The effort faltered, but it got me started.

 

And here I am with "Uncle Miya" and Frank (a former Air Force linguist, very good in Japanese), the main translators on our Japanese NT.

 

The year was 1521. A theologian was riding through the woods, meditating on what had just happened to him. Suddenly, a group of men appeared and captured him, taking him away to the nearby Wartburg Castle. The theologian was Martin Luther (1483-1546), shortly after the famous Diet of Worms (don't you love that?), where he had taken his stand on the Word of God and salvation by faith alone, with no works. His kidnappers were none other than his friends, sent by Elector Frederick of Saxony to take him into protective custody.

At the castle, he was called "Knight George," and carefully protected from his enemies until the hubbub over his stand for the Lord had died down. After all, if salvation is by faith alone with no works, the Catholic religion was a terrible heresy! And if people believed Luther, and thus the Bible, the Church's influence would be greatly diminished. And so it was.

In the meantime, Luther had tons of time on his hands. Fortunately, when "kidnapped" he had the foresight to grab his Hebrew Old Testament and his Greek New Testament. Thus, he began translating the Bible into German. At that time there were many dialects of German, and his choice of which of them to use would prove to be fortuitous.

Incredibly, "Averaging more than 1,500 words a day, he translated the entire New Testament in less than three months, from late December 1521 to March 1522. This 'September Testament' as it came to be known, was published in September 1522" (Ernst Wendland, "Martin Luther—The Father of Confessional, Functional-Equivalence Bible Translation" (Part 1) Notes on Translation Vol. 9 No. 1 (1995):16-36). I cannot imagine translating well at that pace, but Luther did so. He went on to assemble a team of scholarly translators, who then translated the Old Testament. Luther continued revising and correcting until his death.

The translation Luther produced turned out to be one of the greatest in history. It changed and unified the German language so that everyone in Germany spoke the same German. There had been various translations of the Bible before Luther's, but they all faded away when his version appeared. To this day, the Luther Bible is still in print--an incredible accomplishment.