Worse Than Nothing
Worse than Nothing
Marion Cowan is a woman I have heard of my whole life but never met. My Mom (on left in picture) worked with Marion (on right in picture)in Mexico fresh out of Jungle-Camp doing translation work with the Huixtecos (We-STAY-ko). Marion Cowan took Mom under her wing and taught her not only about translation but more importantly about how to love people. They Huixtecos tended to be introverts, suspicious and avoided interacting.
She was a brilliant nurse and linguist, but I heard more stories about how she cared for those native people than about the translation.
Giving them the gospel didn’t just mean putting words on paper. It was also the relationship developed with them, which was in some ways more impactful than the actual translation. While there was agonizing over how long it was taking us to get the printed Word to them, they were seeing the gospel lived out in practical acts of love and compassion. I saw this same pattern continue for all those years we were in Papua New Guinea, especially when we were in the villages, interacting with the Nabak people every day. Allow me to be blunt: the fact that Bible translation takes years is a vital part of the overall translation process. Finishing a translation in only months aborts all the relationships which, when fully conceived, bring a life to the translation that cannot be matched by the words alone!
In the book Living Translation- Their Stories, a book about the Wycliffe Associates MAST process, Bruce Smith describes the strategy they have adopted.[i] Based on a first draft translation of the Gospels, WA calculated the number of verses a person could translate in one day - 31. There doesn’t seem to be any consideration for Bible passages being more complex. Books like Romans, Corinthians, Hebrews and others have deep, difficult, rich concepts which would take longer to accurately translate. This number of 31 verses a day seems highly arbitrary, and I wonder how deeply, if at all, WA consulted with experienced translators. None of them I know from my decades in the field would be comfortable with this process.
It is repeated quite often at the Wycliffe Associate
banquets, that someone who
already speaks the language being translated and knows his own culture would be
miles ahead of a foreigner coming in and learning the language. That
statement simply isn’t accurate. Though a national speaks his language, in many
cases it doesn’t mean he is fully proficient in that language or to the
level of a orator or story teller. The average English-speaking American
commonly uses about 3,000 words, but there are over 171,000 words in current
use in the English language. The basic proficiency that a typical person has
with their native language leads to using words like “car” or “plane,” because
the typical person doesn’t need to know that particular car is a Fiat
500x, or that particular plane is a high-performance turboprop called a TBM 700. (I use the example of that plane because Bruce Smith is a pilot and because WA owns that luxury jet for occasional use by those high up in the organization. That's a teaser for an upcoming blog.)
Among the Nabak, there are those who are considered the language experts. My parents couldn’t just use the young men who were looking for work and wanted to do the translation. They found in a very practical sense that, although they might be earnest, they just didn’t have the knowledge needed. They would give us the Nabak equivalent of “car” and “plane.” If they had not found these experts and engaged them in the process, the ones who could give us the Nabak equivalent of Fiat 500x or Cessna 120, the result would have been a great loss in the beauty of the Nabak translation. I am forced to wonder, and so should you, what is being lost with these rushed translations Wycliffe Associates are doing?
It isn’t just the initial translation process I worry about, either. I have serious concerns about the MAST checking process, the process they use to make sure the translation is accurate. In the Wycliffe Bible Translators process, every verse, every concept needs to pass the rigorous test of accuracy according to the Greek or Hebrew in which it was originally written. But according to the MAST process as described in Living Translation- Our Stories, there is little testing for accuracy, almost as if it isn’t important enough to spend time on.[ii]
There is one section in the book is dedicated to accuracy titled, Caring for Quality. Of the 42-line section of the book only 3 lines state that ‘Accuracy is vital,’ but the rest tells a story of the fact that quality checking workshops happened for the Burmese church leaders. [iii]
Is the national translator educated in Greek? No. Is there a Greek expert at the workshop to do the checking? No. How does he do the checking if he doesn’t know that tribal language? For the Nabak New Testament, every single consultant check improved the Scripture translation. These experts caught mistakes, corrected misinterpretations, added some implied information or reordered verses. All those insights made for a smoother, more accurate document. This is a meticulous process that took many years to work out. It simply cannot be rushed as WA seems to be doing.
This is a very serious situation. I am not opposed to new techniques and new technologies, and I am certainly not against doing translation faster. No, this isn’t an argument against a new process, but a call to action because the basic requirement of Bible translation – accurately translating God’s Word – isn’t being met.
Let me show you some of the specific translation issues that were confronted, and overcome with the Nabak New Testament, so you can get a better idea of the seriousness of the problems a bad or rushed translation will surely cause.
Verses that we thought were easy to translate such as Psalm 24:4-5, “The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust an idol or swear by a false god. They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Savior,” turned out to give a completely wrong meaning when translated literally. This led some Nabak readers to ask us “How come lazy people receive blessing from the Lord?” To the Nabak if your hands were clean, you weren’t working.
How do you translate rhetorical questions like Luke 12:6, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?” or Hebrews 2:3, “how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?” And what should you do if rhetorical questions don’t exist in that tribal language? Yes, that really happens.
Biblical culture is totally unknown to most unreached people. There are many spiritual truths that are figuratively represented by some facet of Jewish history and culture. These same figurative concepts may draw only a blank stare from people of another culture. For example: vine, branches, pruning, patching clothes.
A related issue is how the translators handle words that don’t exist in their country, such as fig, camel, death by Roman crucifixion, sowing seed, wineskins, sheep, lambs or pigs? What’s a Roman? What’s crucifixion? When can you change “fig” to another fruit they know and when can you not?
When translating the word/concept “belt,” such as when referring to John the Baptist’s belt, what should you do if the only people who wear belts in your people group are the women?
The Nabak had six good expressions for “peace.” Which one was best to use in any given passage?
I wish that Wycliffe Associates had continued with its mission the way it started, to support those who were best trained and best able to do serious, accurate translation work. I am happy for new strategies, but not if they undermine tried and true strategies that have been developed to assure the accuracy of God’s Holy Word. It would be a shame if – and I’ll go so far as to say it will be a shame when - future missionaries find their most important task is to correct misinterpretations that developed because of poor, hasty translations. Rushing a Bible translation is a bad idea because that haste opens the process up to error. A bad Bible translation can be worse than no translation at all.
In these cases, it would be preferable to have no translation, and instead employ evangelists to work with the people directly while a translation team, using proper process and procedure, did the work of making an accurate translation.
The evangelists could teach about Jesus and be on hand immediately to clear up any confusion, and the translation team could learn from these points of confusion to be certain the final Bible translation was completed with the most nuance and clarity possible.
These are the hard-hitting questions I am asking you as
people who love God's Word.
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