The Bible Translator: Volume 20, Issue 4

If you have any doubt about the advisability of training national translators, try a little experiment: translate any meaningful mouthful from your own language into a foreign language, then reverse the process: go from the foreign to your own mother tongue. The result is obvious: most anyone is better equipped to encode a message adequately in his own language than in a foreign one. Yet, many translations are still, sometimes of necessity, being done by foreigners into a foreign tongue. In other cases this procedure is followed simply because national speakers are not being given the training and opportunity to translate into their own languages. Dr Loewen shows in this article on the basis of actual experience in South America what the training of national translators in three indigenous languages may consist of. This article should be of interest not only to expatriate translators, but also to nationals who may discover here indications of the kinds of procedures which might be developed in their areas. Ed. View Less