Fascinated by Languages pdf

Fascinated by languages 1Typical problems of Bible translation in sub-Saharan Africa 16 Revision of the Reina-Valera Bible in Spanish 47... The American Bible Society Problems of correct

Fascinated by Languages

Eugene A Nida

John Benjamins Publishing CompanyAmsterdam
/
Philadelphia

of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nida, Eugene Albert,

1914-Fascinated by languages / Eugene A Nida.

p cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

1 Bible Translating 2 Nida, Eugene Albert, 1914- I Title.

Fascinated by languages 1

Typical problems of Bible translation in sub-Saharan Africa 16

Revision of the Reina-Valera Bible in Spanish 47

Some problem passages in the Hebrew and Greek Texts 90

The Ecumenical French translation of the Bible 98

The Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament 109

be a part of a family like that!

Our family attended a Methodist church, where, as a small boy, I had one

of the most meaningful experiences of my life One Sunday a visiting preacherused the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation to prove conclusivelythat Mussolini was the Anti-Christ, but a week later another visiting preacherused the same passage to prove that Mussolini could not be the Anti-Christ

At Wrst, I did not understand just how the Bible could be used in such acontradictory manner But my father helped me understand by saying, “In life

it is even more important to be able to doubt than to believe, because too manypeople love the unbelievable.”

Bugs and bees were so much more interesting to me than baseball, and as

a result my younger brother was convinced that I was mentally deWcient,because I preferred making collections of Xowers, leaves, wood, sea shells,always labelled with their technical names I was especially interested in thebehavior of animals, and particularly of whales, because we saw so many ofthem each summer when we vacationed in Newport, Oregon The fact thatwhales were actually mammals that had become aquatic millions of years agoseemed astounding, and the realization that dinosaurs once dominated theearth and left fossils of their bones and eggs seemed almost incredible, butobviously true Even more amazing was the existence of millions of galaxieshundreds of light-years across

The ScientiWc American (my favorite magazine) and the accounts in

Gene-sis 1 and 2 made sense only as two quite diVerent ways of understanding texts:literally and Wguratively But in Genesis 6 the Bible also says that God himselfwas sorry for having created people This I could readily believe because trulygood people seem to be so scarce

Latin and German were the only languages taught in the high school, but

at the University of California at Los Angeles, I added French and majored in

Classical Greek I also had the exciting advantage of studying the books ofleading linguists: BloomWeld, Sapir, and Malinowski And I was especiallyinterested in the distribution of languages and relations between languagesand between dialects All my other courses, however, were in science: physics,botany, biology, and geology.

At the time of graduation in 1936 a friend urged me to consider attendingthe Summer Institute of Linguistics, held in a farmhouse near Siloam Springs,Arkansas The students were all keenly interested in doing Bible translating inone or more of the Indian languages of Mexico

I went to the Tarahumara area of northern Mexico, but had scarcelyanalysed a dozen texts, when I had serious health problems Nevertheless,

I taught each summer in the program of the SIL until 1952

At the University of Southern California I also Wnished a master’s degree

in patristics, the writings of the early church Fathers This proved immenselyuseful to me in later contacts with Orthodox and Roman Catholic scholars Itwas especially signiWcant to recognize the manner in which Platonists andStoics had inXuenced so signiWcantly the language of the creeds and hadinterpreted the sayings of Jesus as exalted philosophy rather than Good News

Note, for example, the name of the cathedral in Constantinople named Santa

Sophia, “Holy Wisdom,” a tribute to the inXuence of the Platonists and the

Stoics in early Christianity

The American Bible Society

Problems of correctly understanding biblical texts are particularly numerous

in translations made by people who have not mastered either the sponding Greek or Hebrew texts nor the lexical and grammatical structures ofthe local languages But similar complaints about poor translations had comefrom speakers of Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Russian Accordingly,

corre-in 1943 Dr Eric M North, president of the American Bible Society, decidedthat perhaps a linguist could explain why so many copies of the Scriptureswere simply not read or understood, and I was asked to help Wnd some of theanswers to a crucial set of problems

My Wrst task was to evaluate a recently submitted manuscript of theGospel of Mark from Gabon, West Africa It was evidently a Bantu language inview of its complex gender preWxes occurring on nouns, adjectives, and pro-

nouns, both free and aYxed to verbs The translator had carefully Wlled out theforms listing the principal occurrences of key words and parallel passages, so

as to highlight the consistency with which the translator had rendered the text

of Mark But I was immediately suspicious because it is rare that key Greekwords can or should always be translated in the same way In fact, key wordsare very likely to have quite diVerent meanings in diverse contexts Further-more, the translated text seemed to follow too closely the wording of the literalAmerican Standard Version in English, although at other points it appeared todepend too much on the Louis Segond French Version, a translation used bymost theologically conservative missionaries in French-speaking areas ofWest Africa

Because I thought that perhaps Columbia University library might have agrammar or text of a Bantu language spoken in the Gabon, I arranged for aninterlibrary loan of a grammar that turned out to be rather closely related tothe language of the biblical manuscript It did not take more than a few hours

to recognize the tendency of the translator to be quite literal in some passagesand quite free in others And so I wrote up an eight-page report in which Ipointed out a number of problems, especially in those passages in which thetranslator assumed that he had to be carefully consistent The real issue is thattranslators can be consistently wrong as well as consistently right What oneneeds to look for are the consistent inconsistencies

In my report I indicated that the translator obviously had a good grasp ofthe language because he had used some highly intelligent expressions, espe-cially in those passages that had not been listed as requiring consistency inrendering It would not be fair, however, to rate the eVorts of the translatorwithout sitting down with him and going carefully over major portions of thetext This would mean going to Minneapolis, where the translator was living atthat time during World War II

The translator had been seriously misled by being told that he shouldfollow the American Standard Version of 1901, a text that was an importantadvance in terms of Greek textual evidence and exegesis, but terribly literal inwording In fact, in many ways it was more literal and old-fashioned that eventhe King James Version of 1611

As soon as the translator understood that it was not the speciWc words butthe meaning of the Greek text that was important, he proceeded to revise thetranslation so that it would speak meaningfully in the local Yipounou lan-guage But this was only the Wrst of many such experiences in helping transla-

tors see through and beyond the words to the meaning of the text.

In my work for the American Bible Society I was particularly encouraged

by James Oscar Boyd, my predecessor in the translations program, who

intro-duced me to New Testament Studies, The Journal of Biblical Literature,

Inter-pretation, and the Hebrew language, as well as to a number of commentaries,

as a way of helping me make up for my lack of formal seminary training Buteven more important than these academic matters was the kind advice he gave

me as we often had lunch together I particularly appreciated his insistencethat judgment is even more important than knowledge and that God neverasks people to believe what they know is not true

I was also very fortunate to be able to work closely with Margaret T Hills,librarian of the society She was an expert in the history of printed Bibles inAmerica and an excellent administrator Later, the administrative work of thedepartment was handled by Eleanore Dohle, and then Leila Wright, a well-trained administrative assistant educated in Jamaica, guided the administra-tive aspects of the Translations Department for more than thirty years In thepreparation of the Greek-English Lexicon Karen Munson was my indispens-able colleague for several years My Wrst wife, Althea Lucille Sprague, whoearned advanced degrees in both theology and commercial science, was a loyalcompanion in work and travel for almost Wfty years, and in this book most

references to we, us, our represent her help and encouragement.

The United Bible Societies

Shortly after hostilities ceased in Western Europe, Herman C Rutgers of theNetherlands Bible Society visited the United States for discussions concerningplans for the establishment of the United Bible Societies Because of a longhistory of sending out linguists to do translating of the Scriptures into anumber of major languages in Indonesia, the Netherlands Bible Society wasespecially concerned about arrangements for future Bible translating.Since many Indonesians had excellent theological training and were com-petent in both Greek and Hebrew, it seemed unwise to think in terms ofsending out Dutch linguists to do the actual translating, because the timerequired to master the languages and the distinctive cultures would be entirelytoo long if the needs of the churches were to be met Rutgers wisely believedthat the Bible Societies should pay more attention to linguistics and cultural

anthropology, and he proposed that the Netherlands Bible Society sponsor aninternational conference of Bible translators in 1947, following the establish-ment of the United Bible Societies, scheduled for a founding meeting inEngland in 1946.

For the meeting of translators and linguists in 1947 it would be important

to have a document, perhaps even a book, that would outline the variousproblems and provide a series of recommendations about future possibilities

In order to respond to this need, I wrote a book called simply Bible

Translat-ing, published in 1947 by the American Bible Society All my other books,

however, have been published commercially because this usually meant awider distribution, and the income from royalties could go directly to theAmerican Bible Society

The founding meeting of the United Bible Societies was held in May 1946

in Haywards Heath, England, and was attended by sixty-one participantsfrom thirteen countries Several of us from the American Bible Society Xewtogether to London, but we were completely unprepared for what we saw:whole blocks of houses blown to bits and vast areas of nothing but rubble Wehad read about the bombing and had seen pictures of the devastation, but theshock of what we witnessed formed a striking backdrop for the necessity ofcombining all of our resources in money and people to meet the severe needs

of a shocked world What unnerved me most, however, was the chillingscream of a small child during a theatrical performance in which toy bombswere exploded

The representative of the Norwegian Bible Society described how the Nazipolice entered the Bible depot in Oslo and demanded that he turn over allbooks written by Jews But he replied, “All the books here were written byJews.” The police, however, did not know what to do because their orders were

to take only certain books, and so they left without taking any

This brave Bible Society director and former chaplain in the Norwegianarmy, had received each day detailed information about German troop move-ments, military Xights, and the sailing of vessels, which he reported each night

by telephone through Sweden to the Allied headquarters in London All thiswas done without writing down a single word so that others could not beimplicated

Bishop Eivind Berggrav of Norway, who had been under house arrest bythe Gestapo for months, was a Wrm and congenial host with his long-stemmed

pipe which he used for rapping on the table from time to time He explainedhis need for the long stem as being the result of his mother’s admonition tostay as far away as possible from tobacco.

The arrival of Bishop Hanns Lilje from Germany was the emotional highpoint of the meeting He had been delayed because of visa diYculties, butwhen he Wnally showed up at the door, Bishop Berggrave, his good friend andcolleague for many years, rushed to meet him And there in the middle of theroom the two men met with tears running down their cheeks

Most of the discussions were led by Eric North, who had prepared adocument on principles and procedures for a new epoch of cooperation, andGilbert Darlington, treasurer of the American Bible Society, showed how theprogram could be Wnancially underwritten They also had the full support oftheir British opposite numbers, Arthur Wilkinson and John Temple, as well asthe enthusiastic approval of all the other delegates

A key person in the formation of the United Bible Societies was OlivierBéguin, a trilingual Swiss, who had accomplished the impossible in printingand distributing Scriptures to prisoners of war on both sides of the conXict.The rules of the societies prevented the Bible Societies from printing less than

a complete book of the Bible, but Gilbert Darlington felt that this was a seriousmistake, especially during the crucial period of the war, and so he personallypaid for hundreds of thousands of copies of the Sermon on the Mount to bepublished in a number of languages and distributed widely The profoundappreciation for this farsighted act prepared the way for millions of Scriptureselections to be distributed in scores of languages all over the world

As a coordinating organizer for the work of the United Bible Societies and

as a creative guide for various aspects of the Bible Societies, Béguin was agenius Even as an interpreter between German, French, and English speakers,

he had the unique ability to interpret severe arguments in such a way thateveryone involved was convinced of Béguin’s sympathetic integrity We soonbecame close colleagues and friends

The meeting in Haywards Heath was only the beginning, but it laid thefoundation for an organization, that now consists of more than one hundrednational Bible societies that beneWt from joint budgets and from shared plansfor meaningful translations into large and small languages This was a veryopportune time because during the following Wfty years at least some books ofthe Holy Scriptures were published by the Bible Societies and other organiza-

tions into more new languages than during the entire preceding centuries ofChristianity.

In October 16 to 22, 1948, the Netherlands Bible Society hosted the Wrstinternational conference of Bible translators in Woudschoten, Holland Thefocus of the discussions was not on Greek or Hebrew texts or on new exegeti-cal insights, but on the application of linguistics and anthropology to theproblems of communicating the message of the Scriptures in both new andold languages Participants discussed the various techniques for determiningdialect distinctions between geographical and socio-economic dialects, andhow best to evaluate dialect diVerences in view of the religious and linguisticneeds of the churches

One of the major themes was a new approach to helping translators.Instead of depending on correspondence about issues that society-based sec-retaries would never be able to deal with adequately, the shift was toward Weldsurveys by technically-trained people and translation consultants who wouldlive and work in diVerent parts of the world In this way they could give almostimmediate help on hundreds of major and minor matters This would alsomean constant Weld visits by translation secretaries as a way of determininghow best to serve the entire constituency and especially the numerous “new”languages in what were previously colonies

Trips, however, would not be enough A journal published by the UnitedBible Societies for translators was crucial for keeping these new concepts aliveand showing people how they work Some persons, however, were so skepticalabout such a journal that they voted for it only because they were sure that itcould not be continued for more than six months But that is when I became aproliWc ghost-writer

In checking manuscripts with translators, I frequently encountered nating solutions to widespread problems, but the local translators often didnot have the time or thought that they did not have the experience to writeabout such matters Accordingly, I asked them to tell me as much as theycould about what they or we had discovered, and then I would write an article

fasci-if they would permit the use of their names as authors

The following sections dealing with travel and the study of typical problems inlanguages throughout the world represent the highlights of more than twohundred trips that I made during some forty years to diVerent parts of theworld in order to learn about problems of linguistic and cultural diVerences

that prove to be so crucial for proper interlingual understanding In fact, I wasnormally traveling between seven and eight months a year and once wetraveled for a year and a half without returning home Additional types ofproblems are also discussed in later sections that focus on typical problemsfaced by translation consultants.

Part I: In more than ninety countries

The train was so desperately slow and the day so warm that I fell asleep,and about an hour or so later I woke up and looked out to see what appeared to

be Kansas The farm houses were neat dwellings with fences, grass, and hugebarns, something I had never seen in Mexico The Welds of corn were beingharvested just as in mid America I thought I must be dreaming, and like somany other people in similar circumstances I pinched myself to see whether

I was awake or sleeping But then the train limped slowly into a little townwhere all the signs were in German I was convinced that I must be losing mymind And there at the door to the coach were people talking in German

I immediately broke in and said, “Wo bin ich? Where am I,” and they diately told me that I was in a Mennonite colony of German-speaking peoplewho wanted nothing to do with war and had come to Mexico to live out theimplications of their faith

imme-On another occasion our Xight from Juba in the Sudan to Nairobi inKenya was canceled, and we had to go by boat and train, but what a marve-lous trip: elephants trumpeting in tropical grasslands, hippos gathered alongswampy river banks, vast herds of gazelles and zebras, crouching lions moving

in for a kill, and Xocks of birds that darkened the sky

But as the sun was setting, a man rushed into our railroad coach shouting,

“Dr Nida! Dr Nida!” I was startled, but the man immediately urged me to get

oV the train and to accompany him to his home high in a nearby mountain

He insisted that he must have help in correcting the proofs of a New ment text that he had just received from the American Bible Society How heknew I was on the train, I never learned, but I rushed out with him and rodewith him up a narrow mountain road along which eight persons had beenmurdered the night before

Testa-When we Wnally arrived at his home, his wife had a lovely meal prepared,but I insisted on looking at the manuscript Wrst There were scores of prob-lems with his way of marking corrections, and I had to show him what he had

to do to correct his own and the printers’ mistakes But just as we Wnished, weheard the train coming around the mountain So we dashed out of the house,jumped back in the car, and rushed down the mountain to catch the train And

we managed to cross the tracks a few yards ahead of the engine

Like most air travelers I have also had my baggage go oV without me Wedeplaned in Guam, but our luggage, including my new set of lectures on socio-linguistic factors in translating, ended up in Hong Kong because PresidentJohnson was on an oYcial trip to the Orient and security measures preventedour plane from unloading baggage But we were scheduled to leave the nextmorning for Truk and then the following day for Ponape

To make matters worse, Barclay Newman’s Xight from an island nearTruk was delayed, and there I was in Ponape with more than forty translatorswaiting to hear the lectures I furiously redrafted my ideas and decided torearrange the order of concepts so as to make them easier to grasp In fact, thenew outline was so much better than my previous notes, that I followed therevised material in a new book Two days later Barclay arrived to rescue me,and a week later my baggage showed up

Africa South of the Sahara

The Wrst extended trip by any translations secretary of the Bible Societies wasmade to Africa south of the Sahara, where Canon Noel D Coleman of theBritish and Foreign Bible Society and I planned to investigate what wasactually being done about Bible translating in the various countries in EastAfrica and the Congo and how the United Bible Societies could better servethe needs of people in countries that were in transition from being colonies tobecoming independent states

Because Noel Coleman could not get away from his administrative sponsibilities for several months, I spent some time intensively studying tonaldistinctions in several languages in the northwest part of the Belgian Congo,where I had been invited to help work out alphabets for some complex tonallanguages But one of the missionaries in northern Congo completely deniedthe existence of tones despite the fact that in a sample list of words he mis-pronounced fully 90 % of them Nevertheless, he argued that in preaching he

re-no doubt used the tones correctly because the local people enjoyed so muchlistening to his sermons

Members of the congregations did enjoy the sermons enormously Afterchurch services when the missionary spoke, many in the congregationhuddled in the native quarters of the mission and howled in laughter at hismany mistakes In fact, this was the high point of the week’s entertainmentand some mistakes became prime examples of what not to say

At that time in the development of the linguistic theory of “item andarrangement” some linguists assumed that a person could analyze a languagetotally on the basis of the formal features of texts, for example, the order andarrangement of diVerent grammatical classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, ad-verbs, and conjunctions Accordingly, one young linguist had sold the BritishColonial OYce in the Sudan on the idea that he could combine three highlydiverse dialects of Dinka into a single form of the language and thus saveconsiderable money in publishing textbooks As a data base he intended to usethree existing translations of parts of the New Testament But all three transla-tions were excessively literal and in no sense represented accurately the three

dialects In response to questions from government authorities it did not takelong to explain how ridiculous such a procedure would be.

Travel in equatorial Africa has always been a fascinating nightmare Inorder to arrive at an airport to get a plane that Xew only once a week to theSudan, we sincerely hoped that the last violent storm would not have crossedour road, but it had, and a four-foot thick trunk of a massive tree blocked ourway We Wrst thought we would never be able to pass, and the 250-mile detourwould make us lose our Xight But we took a closer look and Wgured that wecould pass by cutting oV some of the massive roots and rolling away some ofthe huge stones, and we were soon speeding down the road

A few miles further, however, we encountered a yelling, frantic crowd ofpeople trying to extricate a drunk woman from a bridge, where her leg wascaught between two huge logs and could not be pulled free The only solutionwas to chisel out a wide enough area so that the frightened woman could berescued, and we could be on our way Fortunately, we had a hammer andchisel in the truck, and I startled chopping out a large section of a rock-hardtropical beam, as I had to lie down Xat beside this terriWed, drunken woman.That experience, however, was really nothing compared to driving bycompass from the Nile to Ethiopia, where a missionary and I were caught in a

Wfty-foot high wall of blazing elephant grass, with hawks and eagles dashingahead of the Wre to catch Xeeing rats and mice and with buzzards and storksswooping down to eat the half-cooked animals on the other side of the Wre Weprepared several buckets of sand and dirt to throw onto the car the moment

we had dashed through the blaze

In the Sudan we Wnally met up with Canon Coleman on our way by-country to South Africa We spent considerable time with translatorsworking on the Shilluk New Testament, because we wanted to study therelations between language and culture in the Nilotic area The expression for

country-“forgiveness,” literally “to spit on the ground in front of someone,” wasparticularly important because of its close tie with the culture

Whenever a plaintiV and a defendant were brought into a native court, thecase was judged by a chief The Wnes were paid, and the guilty party waspunished on the spot Then both the plaintiV and the defendant had to spit onthe ground in front of each other to show that the oVense had been judged, the

Wnes or punishment meted out, and the complaints could never be broughtinto court again Christians began to use such an expression because it seemed

to them to indicate so vividly God’s forgiveness of sins Furthermore, spitting

was thought to be a very important positive symbol For example, in order tobless a person it was customary to spit on the top of a person’s head.

For Noel, who was a remarkable Greek and Hebrew scholar in the bestBritish tradition and a very good friend, such an expression seemed com-pletely unacceptable But in Uganda we encountered some insights that weremore in line with Noel’s tradition We had the opportunity to meet with aleading seminary teacher and famous preacher in the capital, and I took theopportunity to check with him the Wrst part of Romans I asked him to tell usthe meanings of the words, and he responded quickly and seemingly in a verymeaningful manner, but the order was suspiciously like the English Bible.Then I asked him to take one of the sentences and simply give me the meaning

in English, but he said that he could not do that So I asked him why he hadsuch diYculty and how could he prepare a sermon or lecture based on theBible, if he could not understand combinations of words To this he imme-diately replied, “I always read the Bible Wrst in English so that I will know what

it means in my language.” The words were apparently adequate but thegrammar was so artiWcial and awkward that he simply could not understandthe meaning of a text in his own language As we visited translators andchurch leaders in six other countries we discovered that something verysimilar existed in a number of Bible translations

The issue of race was something that could not be avoided, but Africanswere able to understand the issues of race much better than Whites In onecase, for example, they called an African-American woman missionary fromPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, a “black white woman,” because they argued, “Shetalks like a white woman, she eats like a white woman, she thinks like a whitewoman, she walks like a white woman Therefore, she is a white woman whojust happens to be black.”

Some white missionaries we met in South Africa had refused to accept thecolor barrier and accordingly had treated their African colleagues as truefriends When one of the missionaries was given a farewell dinner, his Africanhost declared, “His skin may be white, but his heart is as black as any of ours.”The election of 1948 was crucial for South Africa Those who favoredApartheid won, but one Afrikaner said to me as we visited one of the restrictedareas, “We are buying peace at a terrible price.”

One of the most important religious developments in Africa has been thenumerous nativistic and messianic congregations, often with unusual namessuch as the Seraphim and Cherubim Church in Nigeria, but the most success-

ful of more than 500 such African churches is the Kimbangist movement withmore than six million members by the end of the century.

As a young boy Simon Kimbangu was helped by the British BaptistMissionary Society, and in 1921 he had a crucial religious experience followed

by an evident power to heal sick people But the rapid growth of the bangist churches was interpreted by the Belgian colonial government as beingsubversive, and after a few months Simon Kimbangu was condemned todeath, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the king ofBelgium Six months of preaching and thirty years of imprisonment simplyenhanced his reputation as God’s prophet to Africans

Kim-The Bible in Kituba, the major trade language of the Lower Congo, came more than a mere fetish; it was a manual for church members whorefused to drink alcoholic beverages and who substituted corn bread andbananas in the Communion Service Women were forbidden to use cosmetics

be-or to straighten their hair Nevertheless, this rapidly expanding church hasnow been accepted into the World Council of Churches with the creedaldeclaration “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit by theprophet Simon Kimbangu.” In sub-Saharan Africa religion plays a far moresigniWcant role than in any other major area of the world

The opportunity to visit so many countries and churches in East Africa,South Africa, and the Congo meant a great deal to Canon Coleman and to me

I learned to appreciate more the many distinctive features of British societyand especially the close relation between churches and the colonies We oftendiscussed the rapid changes taking place in Africa and in India, the jewel of theBritish Empire, because we both knew that our work with translators andchurches would rapidly change But we never dreamed that our relationshipwould be cut oV so tragically by Noel’s death on his Xight home to England Infact, the plane crashed in a strong down-draft just a short distance from themission station that we had visited some few months before

Typical problems of Bible translation in sub-Saharan Africa

The problems of translation in sub-Saharan African languages are of fourmajor types: cultural, linguistic, theological, and administrative, somethingthat is also true of most attempts to produce the meaning of the Bible in thehundreds of languages spoken throughout the world But there are particu-

larly diYcult issues aVecting translation work in Africa, where cultural issuesare so crucial, because they are often deceptively similar to those in biblicalaccounts For example, in the Bible sheep are generally regarded as beingparticularly valuable, and goats are often symbols of what is bad, as in thedescription of the Wnal judgment in Matthew 25.32, where the righteous arelikened to sheep and the sinners are called goats But in most of sub-SaharanAfrica, goats are prized for their resourcefulness, and sheep are often regarded

as Wlthy scavengers It is clear that Bible translators cannot make the sheepinto goats and the goats into sheep, but in many texts it is important to have afootnote to explain the cultural values associated with these two closely relatedkinds of domesticated animals

In Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, crowds greeted him by ting branches in his path, but in many parts of Africa this is precisely a devicefor showing contempt for an oYcial or chief Although the biblical accountcannot be altered, it is essential to explain in a footnote the diVerent valuesassociated with such behavior

put-A more subtle cultural problem exists in the arguments by the Sadduceesconcerning the resurrection of the dead In order to catch Jesus in an inconsis-tency about life after death, they spoke about a woman who was marriedsuccessively to seven brothers, all of whom died without the wife producingany oVspring Therefore, the Sadducees, who did not believe in life after death,asked Jesus, “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection of the dead?” But formany Africans such a question is simply stupid, because no one would want to

be married, even in heaven, to someone who was obviously a witch and hadcaused the death of seven brothers

In some parts of Africa the practice of fasting as a form of religiousdevotion is thought to be insulting to God If God has made food available andpeople refuse to eat it, this is nothing other than insulting the Almighty, even

as a man who refuses to accept a gift from a chief is insulting the chief

Africans are generally more likely to grasp the signiWcance of symbolicaccounts than are people in the Western World For example, when local

people learned that the Hebrew name Adam means “ground, dirt” and that the name Eve means “life,” they quickly realized that at this point the Bible was not

speaking about two people but about everyone Such an etymology diately Wt their patterns of mythic interpretation

imme-The Kaka people of eastern French Cameroon regarded the story of Hagarand Ishmael as being an exceptionally important account of the grace of Godrather than a seemingly bizarre tale of how Sarah, the wife of Abraham, gaveher Egyptian slave Hagar to Abraham in order for Hagar to bear a child, whowould be considered the child of Sarah.

Because of the tension between the child Ishmael and Sarah’s own sonIsaac, Hagar and Ishmael were forced to start back to Egypt through thedesert, where the angel of the Lord found and rescued them The Kaka people,however, believe that their god Njambie never spoke to anyone, and certainlynot to a woman, and particularly not to a slave The fact that the God of theBible promised to make Ishmael the father of a great nation was interpreted

by the Kaka people as clear evidence of the unmerited goodness and grace

of God

Some of the ways in which Africans have spoken about the Holy Spirit as

the “paraclete” (in traditional English translations the “Comforter”) are also

culturally insightful In one of the languages of West Africa the Holy Spirit iscalled, “the one who falls down beside us.” This idiom is a direct reference to aperson who stops to rescue an exhausted carrier who has fallen beside the pathand is likely to be killed and eaten by hyenas unless he somehow reaches thesafety of the next village

Some problems, however, are essentially orthographic For example, onemissionary seriously failed to mark tone in an African language and as a result

“This cup of blessing do we bless,” an often quoted expression in the liturgy,actually meant to the people “This cup of poison do we bless.” The propertones were not marked or pronounced correctly by the missionary Further-more, in the case of any suspicious death the people living nearby were forced

to drink a poison cup in order to prove their innocence Accordingly, the localpeople concluded that each week the church members demonstrated theirinnocence by drinking the communion wine

Translators have often not accurately understood the literal English lation of an idiom in the Greek text of Hebrews 6.14, which literally declares

trans-“blessing I will bless.” In a number of languages this is merely an emphatic way

to talk about the reality of blessing, but when translated word for word, it wasunderstood to mean “I will bless you if you bless me.”

Some translators do not pay suYcient attention to contexts, and so theytranslated literally in Genesis 31.5-9 “your father,” in speaking about Laban,the father of Rachel and Leah, Jacob’s two wives But the use of “your father”

would mean that Jacob had already divorced his two wives The translationshould have been the local equivalent of “my father-in-law.”

Certain constructions that involve the preposition of are seriously terpreted by some translators For example, the phrases holy of holies, king of

misin-kings, and song of songs are simply superlatives referring to “the most holy,”

“the greatest king,” and “the best song.”

Rather than a lack of words in a target or receptor language, most tors Wnd that there are plenty of words, and some words have seemingly too

transla-many meanings For example, in one language the word yiey may refer to

“truth, belief, obedience, love, respect, agreement, and acceptance,” and theproper meaning always depends on the context In another language the wordmeaning “kill” is also used in such phrases as “kill a hole” meaning “to Wll ahole,” “kill a marriage” meaning “to get a divorce,” and “to kill a law” meaning

“to break a law” or “not to keep a promise.”

Many people assume that tribal languages in Africa are so primitive thatthey cannot possibly have enough words for translating the Bible, but this isentirely false For example, there are at least 90,000 words in the Zulu dictio-nary if the words are counted in the same way as they are in English In theGreek New Testament there are only about 5,000 diVerent words and in theHebrew Old Testament about 8,000 diVerent words, of which about tenpercent occur only once

Some languages, however, do seem linguistically impoverished, especially

in words for color For example Gbeapo and Bambara, languages of WestAfrica, have only three basic words for color, namely, red, black, and white,but they can make hundreds of distinctions by likening the color of something

to the color of a particular bird or Xower

No translator should ever translate without thoroughly understanding themeaning of a text In one language in Africa a literal rendering of the phrase

“inherit the kingdom of heaven” meant taking God’s place as king, but theproper rendering would be “take you place in the kingdom of God,” or evenbetter, “be happy to have God rule over you.”

Helping translators translate the Scriptures involves much more thanlinguistics and theology For example, we arrived at a mission station on thesouthwest border of Ethiopia just as the rainy season was beginning, but thelocal generator simply could not produce the electricity we needed for lights atnight and for a computer that contained the text we needed to study Before

we arrived, the generator had worked Wne, but we were terribly handicapped

by being without access to the text The only thing we could do was to try to

Wnd out what was wrong in the muggy weather

We Wrst checked out the generator and the contacts were evidentlygood, but when we turned on the gasoline motor, the generator immediatelystopped, because some place there was a short We had to check out one houseafter another and Wnally determined that the short was in the very house inwhich we were staying Then we had to check each outlet, and we Wnallydetermined that the problem must be in a gooseneck lamp, but we could not

Wgure out why there was no trouble in previous days We took the lamp apartand discovered that termites had eaten the insulation around the socket andhad packed the area with dirt This was all right during the dry season, butwith the coming of the rains, the humidity caused the damp earth to produce

of doing

In an interesting and very practical manner many tribal people solve theproblem of banks and investments In one village in the Sudan I asked whowas the richest man in the area, and his house was quickly pointed out, but itdid not seem to diVer from any other dwelling I then asked how one could tellwho was the richest, and they explained that it was always the man who hadgiven most away In a part of the world where there are no banks and no way

to store goods in the tropical environment, the only way to prepare for an oldage is to give food and clothing away and in this manner to make many peopleindebted to you and therefore obliged to pay you back in times of old age

or illness

In some areas people want to have toilets that will not attract hordes of

Xies, and so they construct a thatch building in which people must follow anarrow inside passage two times around the inside of the thatched building

before reaching the dark central hole for defecation At this point, the light is

so dim that Xies never reach it

Many people assume that Africans are inferior in intellectual capacity,and therefore it is important not to expect too much of them But I was greatlyimpressed by one bright ten-year-old Shilluk boy in Doleib Hill in the Sudan.Like almost everyone else, he went naked most of the time, but at school hewore a small sheet tied over one shoulder He was also a particularly keentranslation helper About twenty years later, however, I had a telephone callfrom the Sudan Embassy near the United Nations, and I was invited to havelunch with my young friend from Doleib Hill

The keenest minded translators that I have ever worked with were WveBushmen in the Kalahari Desert I was astounded by the speed with whichthey caught on to what I was trying to Wnd out about their language I hadnever before worked with such astonishingly bright men, who spoke an ex-traordinarily complex language with numerous clicks, complex tonal pat-terns, and hundreds of ways to imitate and to refer to the movements, size,shape, and noises made by large as well as tiny creatures They are also clever

in tracking prey and can follow an animal until it collapses from fatigue

Polygamy is a serious issue for some Bible translators For most Africans,however, there are simply two kinds of polygamy: the simultaneous polygamypracticed in Africa and the serial polygamy practiced in countries where somepeople marry and divorce repeatedly! In fact, many Africans insist that simul-taneous polygamy is much better for children than the serial type in theWestern World

As I traveled extensively in both French and English colonies, I was muchimpressed to Wnd that in French colonies the Africans spoke French quitewell, but in English colonies the Africans spoke English rather poorly Ibrought up this matter in conversation with a widely traveled member of theBritish colonial service, and he agreed that my observations were correct But

I wanted to know the evident reasons for such a diVerence, and my friendexplained, “If an African comes into the oYce of a French oYcial and speaksParisian French, the oYcial is very pleased, but if an African enters the oYce

of a British oYcial and speaks Oxford English, the oYcial is very likely to beoVended.” Sociolinguistic values play a highly complex role in many aspects

of language

On several occasions I have been asked to visit a program for teaching newmissionaries the local language In one such program in Central Africa I was

told that one bright young woman would have to be sent home to the UnitedStates because she simply could not pass the language examination that re-quired new missionaries to list all the preWxial classes for singular and pluralnouns This seemed to me to be a strange reason for terminating a career, and

so I asked if the woman could speak the local language at least to a limitedextent, and the teacher immediately told me, “She actually speaks the languagebetter than all the other new missionaries.” Then I asked, “What are youteaching: the grammar or the language? If she speaks the language satisfacto-rily, why are you worried about the grammar? She will undoubtedly continue

to use and improve her facility in language for the rest of her life.”

The administrative aspects of Bible translating are essentially the same forpeople throughout the world, but there have been some special aspects oftranslation in the past that need to be carefully reconsidered For example, themissionary who was primarily responsible for the translation of the Bible intoone of the major languages of West Africa went back to England after theBibles had been printed and distributed But during his time on furlough hedecided to take some courses in African languages and linguistics He soonrealized how many mistakes he had made in guiding the work of the localAfricans In fact, he stayed in England another year in order to obtain moretraining in linguistics Upon his return to the Weld he petitioned the commit-tee on Bible translations to have the opportunity to correct some of the morestriking mistakes in the Bible for which he was responsible, but his request wasrefused because the committee did not want anyone “tampering with theWord of God.”

In some programs, however, there may be subtle problems of ing that need to be carefully dealt with On one occasion a local African bishopand I worked out a plan for paying the translators of a new Bible project thesame amount as the more experienced pastors were receiving We agreed thatthe translators should not be paid more than the others or jealousy wouldprejudice the acceptance of the Bible text

understand-Six months later, however, I received a letter from the bishop that theBible Societies would have to double the pay for the translators I was verysurprised and wrote back indicating how such payments would seriouslyharm the acceptance of the new text, and unless there were factors that thebishop had not mentioned, I could not justify such a radical change in thecosts of the project Then the bishop replied that if we did not agree to double

the salaries, he would write to the churches in the United States who weresubsidizing the program of the mission.

I could not see any other solution than to write again to the bishopreminding him of our agreement I sent a copy of my letter to the oYce of thesupporting churches, which acknowledged my letter with special thanks be-cause they were themselves afraid to alienate the bishop Six months later,however, I had to be back in that part of Africa, and I was wondering just howthe bishop would react But the Wrst person to rush out to the plane was thebishop himself, who gave me one of the most warm-hearted hugs that I hadever received

I was totally surprised, but I learned from others that the bishop was sothankful to be treated in the same way that he knew I would treat any whiteman He was so pleased Wnally to be treated like the man he truly was ratherthan being paternalized because of his race

Reaching agreement on translation principles for major languages volving a number of major churches is often a major task On one occasion,however, I was urged to be present for the Wnal meeting of a sponsoring com-mittee I arrived at the mission station in the afternoon and never expected toencounter an agenda that included such items as the name for God, a list ofkey theological terms, problems of direct and indirect discourse, singulars andplurals, and exegetical notes In fact, almost everything that one could imag-ine But when I asked how many days they had set aside for the discussions, Iwas told that the representatives could only be there for one day In myjudgment an agenda of that type could never be adequately reviewed in lessthan a week Furthermore, the representatives of the various churches in-cluded Anglicans, Pentecostals, Quakers, Danish Baptists, and Seventh DayAdventists So I spent until midnight trying to learn more about the variousissues

in-After a brief devotional period led by the Anglican representative, the Wrstperson to speak was the Pentecostal, who surprised everyone by saying that hethought that he and others of his church were wrong about some of theirrecommendations But this frank questioning of past points of view created anincredibly open atmosphere for dealing with item after item on the agenda Bylate afternoon the agenda had been fully discussed, and creative decisions hadbeen made

I was so astonished with the outcome that I asked how such an agreementcould be made so rapidly and eVectively Some dramatic changes had obvi-ously taken place in the relations between diVerent missions and churches andespecially in the relations between Africans and missionaries Reconciliationshad completely altered interpersonal relations and had indirectly formed thebasis for cultural and linguistic insights.

To Asia with Wilfred Bradnock

After the death of Canon Coleman it was some time before the British andForeign Bible Society appointed the Reverend Wilfred Bradnock as Secretary

of Translations Bradnock’s experience in India and his studies at Oxfordmade him a very acceptable Secretary of Translations, and he tried hard torepresent the interests of the British Society and to improve contacts betweentranslators in the Weld and oYce secretaries in London who were responsiblefor correspondence about translation problems, composition, and proofread-ing On this particular trip to Asia Wilfred Bradnock was only able to go as far

as Thailand

Experiences in a number of diVerent parts of the world are here presented

as though they were part of a seemingly endless trip to most of the world, butexperiences with translators are frequently quite similar and accordingly theyare here presented as a single series although the insights represent scores oftrips to many parts of the world

Lebanon

Our Wrst stop was in Lebanon where we explored the possibility of a revision

of the Arabic Bible so that the text would be more on the level of acceptablenewspaper editorials rather than in the more traditional Koranic form oflanguage But we immediately faced the issue of diVerent sociolinguistic levelsexpressed so well by the common adage, “No Arab will admit that anotherArab knows how to write Arabic.” The rivalry between Lebanon and Egyptabout these matters delayed progress for a number of years, and only a highlycompetent translation consultant was able to resolve the issues

We were also surprised to learn that many of the Protestant pastors greatlypreferred Arabic Bibles that did not contain the diacritical marks indicatingthe classical pronunciation of the words This seemed to be a serious contra-diction, because the pointing of the text would seem to make it easier to beread correctly But most pastors preferred not to read the text in the tradi-

tional form because it seemed so old-fashioned and grammatically strange.Accordingly, they wanted to have Bibles without the pronunciation marks sothat they could read the text in a more colloquial and understandable mannerwithout being criticized for mispronunciations.

On our one free day we decided to visit the Syrian town of Banyas in order

to see the headwaters of the Jordan River as it Xows out from the base ofMount Hermon, but this meant talking our way through well patrolled andguarded frontiers between Lebanon and Israel and between Israel and Syria

We were a mixed tourist assortment: one British, two Americans, oneGerman (working with the local Bible Society), and the Lebanese chauVeur.Nevertheless, we talked our way through two “hermetically sealed frontiers.”But as soon as we began taking pictures of the headwaters of the Jordan, wewere arrested by a sergeant, who turned us over to a captain, who then called

in the Syrian secret service, who held us incommunicado for several hours as

we gave up hope of getting back to Beirut in time to get our 5:00 A.M Xight toIndia Finally we were released to go back through no-man’s-land where wehoped to pass unchallenged by Israeli or Syrian soldiers, and we did make ourCalcutta-bound plane

India

We had never seen a city like Calcutta with more than 500,000 people living inthe streets: one woman and two small children squatted under a table used fordisplaying cloth near a shop door, and others huddled on sidewalks with chalkmarks indicating their living space Several millions in the nearby state ofBengal were suVering from a severe famine, while local oYcials refused todistribute free grain provided by Canada and Australia because this wouldreduce the proWts of merchants who had hoarded grain in large warehouses.Later the Bible Society of India sponsored two diVerent conferences forBible translators, which people from Northeast India attended enthusiasti-cally and made major contributions to a new day in church leadership.Some of us were invited to the home of a prosperous retired army oYcereducated in England This cultured man spent much of his time at his countryclub and at the racetrack, while servants supplied his Wfty or more Hindu godswith daily gifts of food Each morning the steps of his home were ceremoniallysprinkled with the ashes of cow dung, and the dishes were rinsed in water

containing fresh manure Like so many other educated Indians, this man feltcompletely at home in two quite diVerent cultures.

Burma/Myanmar

In Burma the people from the Hill Tribes were the dynamic innovators ofmeaningful translations Students had to struggle to get an education, andleaders who were not Burmese were constantly harassed In fact, it was noteasy to make contact with many of the inXuential people because foreignerswere generally suspected of having hidden motives Fortunately, one localleader from the Chin Hills was able to obtain further training in the UnitedStates, and he has been able to visit Burma from time to time to give crucialadvice to people translating the Scriptures into a number of tribal languagesspoken in the northern part of the country

Thailand

Our visit to Thailand was much more encouraging Despite the opposition ofsome very conservative missionaries who were opposed to a Bible revision inThai, most of the church leaders, including both Roman Catholic and Protes-tant, were strongly in favor of a more meaningful text with notes, sectionheadings, and introductions, because many Buddhists have serious diYculties

in understanding various passages of the Bible

One devout Buddhist priest, who had heard that Jesus was a famousreligious teacher, went to the Bible House in Bangkok to buy a New Testamentbecause he wanted to know more about a person that Christians called “theSon of God.” A month later the priest returned and exclaimed, “This manJesus must have been one of the greatest gurus that has ever lived, because hewas born and died, born and died, born and died, and born and died, and inonly four reincarnations he attained nirvana.” For this Buddhist priest thefour Gospel accounts were interpreted as four reincarnations, and what madeJesus so remarkable was the fact that he reached the bliss of nothingness bymeans of only four births and deaths, while according to Buddhist traditionGautama, the founder of Buddhism, is said to have required a thousandreincarnations before attaining nirvana

Many Buddhists have even greater diYculty in understanding verse 3.16

in the Gospel of John, “For God so loved the world that he sent his onlybegotten Son so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but haveeverlasting life.” Although this verse is often quoted by Christians as being theessence of their faith, it seems completely nonsensical to most informedBuddhists For example, the phrase “God so loved the world” is regarded bymost Buddhists as being completely incompatible with supernatural revela-tion, because “love of the world” is thought to be the basis of all humandeception and sin

The following statement about God “giving his only begotten Son” isequally strange How could God, as the spiritual force of the universe, possibly

have a Son? Who was God’s wife? Furthermore, the English word begotten is

practically never used in English except in the Bible or in books about theBible, and accordingly it is an empty symbol for most people The Greekword actually means “only, unique, one of a kind,” but early translators of theNew Testament into Latin mistook the meaning of the Greek word and

used the Latin word unigenitus, which can mean “only begotten.”

Unfor-tunately this mistake by Latin translators has produced serious confusion formany centuries

The last part of this verse is, however, even more disturbing for Buddhists,because it declares that believers in Jesus “shall not perish but have everlastinglife.” For devout Buddhists “everlasting life” would be the worst of all punish-ments Such people would never be able to escape into the oblivion of nirvana,but would be eternally chained to the inexorable wheel of inWnite rebirthsand deaths

Several years later, William Smalley and Herbert Grether organized animportant conference on Bible translating, which was attended by both Prot-estant and Roman Catholic translators from several parts of the Orient Thelocation of the conference in the lush tropics of southern Thailand was idyllic,

if only there had not been those huge cockroaches to zoom in on us in theevening, the mosquito choirs to sing us to sleep, and the gorgeous magpies toscream us awake each morning

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Thailand, the Most Reverend GeorgePhimphisan, became an ardent supporter of Bible translating and served for anumber of years on the council of the United Bible Societies

This conference in Thailand was one of several in which Althea developedtyping lessons for translation helpers, but the process of teaching often in-

volved three sets of interpreters, as in Thailand: English to Southern Thai,Southern Thai to Northern Thai, and Northern Thai to the local tribal lan-guage Most of the translation helpers practiced at least four and Wve hours aday in order to return home with the prestigious honor of being able to type,the indigenous equivalent of a Ph.D degree And at this point on our trip toAsia, Bradnock needed to return to London.

Taiwan

In Taiwan there were three quite diVerent types of problems: (1) translationsinto local indigenous languages, related linguistically to the languages of thenorthern part of the Philippines, (2) a translation into Taiwanese (a dialect ofChinese used in Taiwan and opposed by the Kuomintang government), and(3) the insistence of the Kuomintang government that publications in Chineseshould employ the traditional form of Chinese characters rather than thesimpliWed characters adopted by the government on the mainland

Due to the resourcefulness of I-jin Loh, the translation consultant forTaiwan as well as for the People’s Republic of China, two strategic conferenceswere held and the foundation was laid for full cooperation with RomanCatholic scholars in producing Wrst a joint translation of the New Testament

in popular Chinese and later an entire Bible

One of the most diYcult tasks for translation consultants in Asia is theformulation of an appropriate orthography for some of the smaller, indig-enous languages Too often, missionaries want to employ only the Romanalphabet rather than adapt an orthography to the system of existing nationallanguages And many try to simplify the orthography so that the diVerentsounds can be indicated by the keys of a standard typewriter At the same time,some missionaries have not suYciently analyzed the distinctive sounds, and

as a result they overlook crucial distinctions in vowels and consonants, as well

sounds of the language), phonemics (the distinctive contrasts in sounds thatmake diVerences in the meaning of words), and graphemics (a systemfor adapting the symbols of the local languages to the usage of a domi-nant language).

As always, the meanings of particular terms depend so much on context.For example, the act of carrying some object may be expressed by a number ofdiVerent verbs depending on what and how something is carried, for example,

in the hands, on the top of the head, in a basket, on the shoulders, on the ends

of a pole, on the back And in a number of languages there are numericalclasses, based on the shape and size of objects: long, thin, round, lumpy,square, oblong, rectangular, and hollow, and in many contexts of the Bible it isnot possible to know precisely the shape and size of objects

Words also may diVer on the basis of a plural or singular reference Aword referring to sin may always be plural in form, even though the biblicalreference is to a single bad action A number of languages also have severalmodal particles to indicate probability, certainty, uncertainty, success, andfailure In the case of Luke 4.29, rendered in the New Revised StandardVersion as “They got up, drove him out of town, and led him to the brow of thehill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him oV the cliV,”there are a number of spatial uncertainties If he was “out of the town,” thenhow could he have been led to the brow of a hill on which the town was built?Their purpose was obviously to throw him down the cliV, but in the next verseJesus passes through the hostile crowd Were they inside or outside of thetown? The Greek text does not specify clearly the locations of the events, butsome languages require greater speciWcation and accordingly translators have

to represent a reasonable sequence of events and locations

In John 2.4 the Greek text has the word gunai, literally “woman” in a

response by Jesus to his mother, who had urged him to provide wine for theguests at a marriage feast in Cana A literal translation of the Greek term seemsnot only harsh, but even disrespectful, and in many languages of the Orientthis type of response would be regarded as completely insulting In koine

Greek, however, the term gunai often occurs in polite papyri letters written by

schoolboys requesting help from their parents Accordingly the New EnglishBible and most other translations into modern languages have terms that areequivalent to English “mother.”

Because the translation committee responsible for a revision of the Bible into amore understandable form of Japanese had spent more than 40 % of thebudget and had completed only 13 % of the work, I was asked to visit Japan inorder to determine what seemed to preclude more eVective progress in thework I read everything I could on Japanese culture and language, but I wastotally unprepared for what actually took place

As is customary, I was invited to dine with members of the translationscommittee the evening of my arrival, and toward the end of the meal I wasasked to share with the committee the reasons for my visit They, of course,already knew, or certainly suspected, the reasons for my visit, because Dr.North had already sent a letter explaining his concerns about the slow pro-gress in revising a text that was extremely diYcult for young people to com-prehend

In response to their request I indicated my concern that the moneyexpended was so much greater than the results In addition, I explained some

of the basic principles of revision for a youth audience, and I was concernedabout the manner in which the committee had apparently misinterpreted theprinciples for the revision recommended by Dr North

When I was asked about the age of translators responsible for a revisionbeing prepared primarily for young people, I explained that generally we hadfound that some of the most creative work had been done by teams consisting

of persons between thirty-Wve and forty-Wve years of age, because such sons would probably be able to make a more creative revision for the intendedaudience Unfortunately, I had not been told that only two of the committeemembers were in their sixties, and the rest were in their seventies and eighties.Nevertheless, the chairman of the revision committee expressed greatsatisfaction with my presentation and asked one member of the committee tomake a record of what I had said Then the committee voted unanimously toaccept the recommendations

per-As we left, however, I asked the missionary who had arranged for my visit,

“Why was it necessary for me to have come I could have sent a letter ing all the issues.” I was then told, “This evening didn’t happen, and you can becertain that what you said and how they responded will never be mentionedagain They were only being typically polite.” In other words, this was what

concern-anthropologists call “a zero event,” a signiWcant absence of something Andthat is precisely what happened.

During the next two months I sat with the committee for about thirtyminutes each day, during which I shared information about some recentdevelopments in biblical studies The committee members were extremelyinterested in new developments in Greek and Hebrew textual studies and innew insights in theology because they had been largely cut oV from theologicaljournals and commentaries during the war years

In one session I tried to explain the application of principles of translationand revision for passages such as Romans 1.17, which in the King JamesVersion speaks of “the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith,”while the Revised Standard Version has “the righteousness of God is revealedthrough faith for faith,” and the New English Bible speaks about “God’s way ofrighting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends in faith.” Clearly thephrase “righteousness of God” should not be understood as God’s own per-sonal righteousness, but as the way in which God puts people right withhimself or the manner in which God rights wrong Furthermore, “from faith

to faith” should be understood primarily as an idiom indicating a continuousprocess of faith and conWdence in God

The Japanese translators were not, however, impressed with the task ofmaking the text more meaningful, because, as they said, “If the Bible becomesthat clear, what will the preachers have to preach about?” I tried to assure thecommittee that preaching was not a process of explaining the meaning of theGreek or Hebrew text, but of applying the meaning to the circumstances ofpeople’s lives

Revision of the Japanese New Testament was further complicated bythe multiple Japanese orthographic system that employed three systems ofwriting: the kanji characters borrowed from Chinese, the syllabic system ofkatakana used for both words and aYxes, and the furigana symbols often usedalongside the kanji and katakana symbols to indicate the pronunciation ofwords, a device often used in texts requiring explanations I strongly urged theuse of furigana symbols in particular contexts of the revision because suchsymbols would make the text much more useful for young people At Wrst, themembers of the committee rejected the idea because the page would notappear so aesthetically acceptable Furthermore, if such symbols were em-ployed in a Bible for young people, such a Bible would be more popular

than the standard text for adults In the end, however, all three orthographieswere employed.

Some years later the Bible Society of Japan sponsored an outstandingconference of Bible translators working in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and thePhilippines More than sixty participants met in excellent facilities on theoutskirts of Tokyo At the end of the Wrst week, however, the Japanese profes-sor who was responsible for the program told me that the Korean, Chinese,and Filipino delegates were very happy with my lectures, but the Japanese feltthat my lectures were so clear that I was evidently not a scholar Therefore, thedirector said that it was absolutely necessary for me to give a lecture thatparticipants would not understand, even though such a lecture would becompletely contrary to my constant desire to be as clear as possible regardless

of the complications in terminology and grammar

At last I agreed to give a lecture that people would not understand, and so

I chose to talk about some important mathematical concepts relating to munication, namely, graph theory, dimension theory, information theory,and isomorphs, that I had been discussing with some friends working inadvanced mathematics After the lecture several Japanese participants came

com-up to congratulate me, and the director of the program assured me that fromthen on the Japanese participants would accept my lectures as representing ascholarly approach to crucial problems of interpretation and translation

China

Shortly after the Cultural Revolution in China, I shared with my colleagues inthe American Bible Society that I had received an invitation to give a series oflectures in a language institute in Guangzhou, China, and they urged me toaccept the opportunity They also suggested that I stop oV in Nanjing in order

to speak with Bishop Ding and his colleagues, who were giving leadership tothe churches that had been recognize by the government and had received thechurch buildings conWscated during the Cultural Revolution Althea was alsovery interested in going with me because she had for a number of years beenassociated with a program for funding higher education in Asia

The linguistics program of the Guangzhou Language Institute was lent, but the library of the school was pathetically inadequate Imagine havingsome 600 students and a library of less than 600 books! During the Cultural