My Home is in Heaven

    Living Translation: My Life is an autobiography by Bruce Smith, president of Wycliffe Associates until recently. He was also the President over the starting and growth years of MAST. It is the story of a man who sees everything before him as either unimportant, or on fire, and he is the only fireman around. In his own words he writes, “Ever since I can remember I’ve done things quickly . I didn’t walk to school, I ran… I treat email like instant messaging. This can drive people around me crazy, but it’s how I’m wired - instant on and default full speed .” [i]    In his review of this book Karl Franklin, Ph.D., Senior Anthropology Consultant and linguist for the esteemed Bible translation organization SIL, writes, “ Smith did not start out with Bible translation in mind and confesses that he has not done any Bible translation himself. Rather, he sees himself as a man of action, running the race and involving multitudes in his vision…And Smith is never short o...

  A family friend, Dr. Steve Marlett, a Bible translator who serves in Mexico, wrote this in an email. They are revising an already completed translation.  I think his short but very linguistic email highlights how diligent we have to be with the translation process, and how sacrificing accuracy for speed can very easily diminish the Word of God. This important details would be lost if the Marlett’s only spent two weeks with the Seri or if the Seri themselves only worked on the translation for two weeks. "One of the sounds of Seri is a voiceless uvular fricative. I don’t know if any other language in Mexico has this sound. You can probably pronounce it if you can imagine yourself trying to gargle in secret. In fact, Seri has two such sounds— a plain one and another one just like it, except that you round your lips while making it. I think they are two of the favorite sounds in the language since lots of words have them. If you can’t make one, you can’t speak Seri. The ...

    I have written about translating the Bible into languages that don’t yet have a Bible translation, but now let’s talk about translating the Bible into English. There are approximately 70 English translations. The New International Version is my favored version and the one that I read the most. I was astounded to learn about the long process that Howard Long went through to get a version that he could use to share Scripture with non-Christians after finding that the King James Version didn’t connect. In 1965, a cross-denominational gathering of evangelical scholars met near Chicago and agreed to start work on the New International Version. Instead of just updating an existing translation like the KJV, they chose to start from scratch, using the very best manuscripts available in the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the Bible. To ensure maximum accuracy and readability, the NIV went through perhaps the most rigorous translation process in history. First, each...