Missio Nexus recently posted an article titled, When Translation Is the Difference Between Life and Death. Basically, this team expanded their community health work in rural northern India from several dozen villages to several hundred as part of a UNICEF project, but initially faced challenges in engaging the young women on their team. Through Bible study, they discovered translation discrepancies that portrayed women as “feeble-minded,” which had hindered their participation. Once these women understood their God-given value, their confidence grew, leading to significant community improvements and a transformative impact on the villages. Check it out at https://missionexus.org/when-translation-is-the-difference-between-life-and-death/.
4) A Bible Version Portrayed Women As “Feeble-Minded”
Very interesting article! Translation decisions often have far reaching effects that we may never know about.
But I was very disappointed to see the author implying that every “good” translation should be made from the original Greek and Hebrew. (From the article: “I discovered that most Indian translations depend on the English 1885 Revised Standard Version (RSV), rather than the original Hebrew and Greek.” “He (William Carey) worked with Hindu scholars to create a Sanskrit translation which he used as the basis for all other Indian language translations, rather than the original Greek and Hebrew source documents.”)
As a Bible translator for an indigenous language in Mexico and a very poor language learner, I would never even have thought of engaging in Bible translation if the requirement had been to know Greek and Hebrew AND the previously unwritten language that I was to learn and was hoping to share God’s Word in.
For the record, my husband, who is a native speaker of the language, is now doing the translation. He doesn’t know Greek or Hebrew either but speaks Spanish and English very well, so he can access all the information via both languages in Bibles, commentaries, translation helps and resources, etc.
Please don’t imply that the only “good” Bible translations are based on “the original Greek and Hebrew source documents.” Please don’t make our task any harder than it already is.
Just wondering: How many years does it take to learn Greek to know it well enough to translate from the source material?