Bible translation is a technical task, not a spiritual one

 

When Cameron Townsend in the 1920s was involved with translating the Bible into the Kaqchikel language in Guatemala, he noticed that he had much to learn from the then emerging discipline of modern linguistics. By no means was he the first modern missionary doing Bible translation, but he was the first who realized that Bible translation is an endeavour that requires more than just a good evangelical heart, a desk, a dictionary, and a patient mind. He therefore first founded the Summer Institute of Linguistics and later, to support the former, the Wycliffe Bible Translators. These organizations were to do Bible translation with a strong technical foundation, with a thorough grounding in linguistics, anthropology, theology and translation studies.

Throughout the 20th century, this approach to Bible translation dominated the landscape. Bible translators tended to be people who were comfortable at academic conferences, published linguistic articles, regularly met at workshops, spent a lot of time training the next generation of translators, and were following elaborate sets of strict standards that governed how translation could happen, what products needed to be in place before it could happen, and what quality-control measures needed to be applied to ensure successful translation. In short, these people understood that they were involved in a technical endeavour, and they behaved accordingly.

At the same time, these were also immensely spiritual people, meeting daily for prayer meetings before work, and who were keen to listen to God's input into their work by any means their individual theology allowed. After all, it was their strong faith that motivated them to invest their lives into this work, which they certainly saw as a spiritual enterprise to further God's Kingdom.

It is this spiritual motivation that may have led them into claiming for themselves that they were involved in a spiritual work, resulting in a spiritual product, and that requires foremost spiritual qualifications, in spite of all their technically-driven actions and routines during their work. And if we look how Bible translation is viewed by many of its supporters and decision makers in our generation, it may indeed appear as if the spiritual nature of the work has won out over the technical side. While a considerable amount of energy and time is invested in the spiritual growth and well-being of the translators, many of the standards, procedures and safeguards of the 20th century have fallen by the wayside. And why shouldn't they? If the assumption is correct that Bible translation is really God's work to which he has called us, then the best thing we can do to ensure good quality is to submit to God's leading, pray for wisdom and spirit-led decision making, and then charge onwards to do His work. What can possibly go wrong when we do just that?

Now, here I want to challenge the 21st-century assumption that Bible translation is foremost a spiritual task. I have to admit that throughout the past few decades I was prepared to allow for Bible translation to be both a spiritual and a technical task, but thinking about it for a bit longer even this idea doesn't hold. Bible translation is a technical task, in spite of its highly spiritual motivation, and in spite of the spiritual lifestyle of the practitioners.

In order to understand why, let's envision a Christian hospital – I may have to come back to this analogy a few more times while writing the entries to this blog. A Christian hospital is a hospital run by Christians, usually a church, out of a Christian motivation, such as showing God's love to the people around the church. Therefore, the motivation for this hospital is certainly spiritual, but the work in the hospital can only be described as technical, or, more specific, medical. The people who work in the hospital ideally will be trained medical practitioners, such as doctors, nurses, or physical therapists. These people work according to the standards they have learned in their training, and they are accountable to the patients and to the local authorities to ensure that their work satisfies these accepted standards. That is probably the best way to show God's love to the local people anyway. Now assume that, for some strange reason, the Christian governors of the hospital decide that from now on all the accepted best medical practices are no longer important, as it is now God's work only that is in focus in the hospital, and that such a spiritual approach would automatically lead to the best possible results anyway. It is not difficult to predict that this hospital, after a string of embarrassing scandals, will be forced to terminate its services in a very short time.

Now it still needs to be shown that Bible translation belongs into a similar category. One might want to argue that, because the object of the translation is the Word of God, Bible translation by definition must be foremost a spiritual endeavor, as the resulting product will (or will not) have the potential to spiritually affect the lives, if not the eternity, of its readers. If this were the case, I would, as a user of a Bible translation, have to clearly prefer the product of more spiritually driven translators, even if they have zero training and no understanding of the source language or the target language, the differences between the cultures, New Testament exegesis, and all the other technical factors that come to mind in translation. I would have to prefer their translation to one produced by non-believers of the highest technical standards. But would I, really? 

I have to admit that some people indeed reject Bible translations because they don't trust the spiritual credentials of the translators, so such choices are being made. But for me personally, there are some translations into my mother tongue German that I never, ever look at and for which I know for a fact that they have been created by the most godly people you can think of. They just weren't competent Bible translators, often without any kind of training – and it shows. On the other hand, there are some translations where I wouldn't exactly vouch for the orthodoxy of all the translators involved, but which are technically as good as any other German translation, and I use these translations a lot. (Let me quickly point out that there are a number of excellent German Bible translations which were done by sound Christians, and I read those, too)

Okay, you may with some justification now claim that if I allow my personal Bible translation experience to be poisoned by the products of doubtful translators, then it should be no surprise that my understanding of Bible translation itself is tainted, as is this blog. But I think there are good reasons for me to uphold my position.

Firstly, it is the Word of God itself that provides spiritual weight to the work of a Bible translator. And this was written in Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew. The job of the translator is to get this spiritual treasure across into another language. Just as a printer of a Bible edition needs to apply his best knowledge and skills to create a readable, durable and clean book containing the Bible, in the same way the translator needs to apply the tools of his trade to get the Word of God published in a new form. Not the book in itself is holy, because it contains the Word of God, and not the translation as such is in any way more or less spiritual. But depending on the skill of the printer, the book is either lousy or nice, and depending on the translators' skill, the translation has a high quality or not. I submit that the prayer-life or theological soundness of the printer or the translators does not have much of an impact on the quality of the product, surely a lot less than their technical capacity.

Secondly, even in today's Bible translation movement it is accepted that not all translations can be produced by strong believers. Depending on the geographical and religious context of the language community, the Bible is often either translated by non-believers, or not at all. For these translators this work may feel as a technical challenge, often also as a service to the language community, but they see no spiritual value in it themselves. Still it is hoped that their work will eventually become a rich spiritual blessing to many, which is certainly more likely if it is of a high technical standard.

So it is really the craftsmanship, knowledge and skills of the translators that have the most lasting impact on the quality of a Bible translation – in short: their technical abilities. I will pursue in other blog entries the question how this technical capacity is achieved, and what areas of expertise need to be part of it so that a translator can be technically proficient.

All this, as I hope is still clear, does not mean that I advocate in any way for non-believers or heretics to become involved in Bible translation. In most situations over the past few centuries this has always been a mute point anyway: Bible translators for the most part have been Christians, which is exactly what motivated them to undertake this work. My point, up to now, was entirely to submit to the discussion the statement that Bible translation is a technical task, more than anything else we may wish to call it. This statement, if it survives the discussion, has implications on what I will write in future entries. My observation is that in the current environment Bible translation is not treated as a technical task, which leads to quite a number of unintended and unpalatable consequences.