The Challenges Facing The Translators

How do you translate a bok into a language that has no written script? Numerous Bible translators faced just such a challenge. For example, Ulfilas, of the fourth century C.E., set out to translate the Bible into what was then a modern but not a written language-Gothic. Ulfilas overcame the challenge by inventing the Gothic alphabet of 27 characters, which he based primarily on the Greek and the Latin alphabets. His translation of nearly the entire Bible into Gothic was completed before 381 C.E.

In the ninth century, two Greek-speaking brothers, Cyril (originally named Constantine) and Methodius, both outstanding scholars and linguists, wanted to translate the Bible for Slavic-speaking people. But Slavonic-the forerunner of today's Slavic languages-had no written script. So two brothers invented an alphabet in order to produce a translation of the Bible. Thus the Bible could now "speak" to many more people, those in the Slavic world.

In the 16th century, William Tyndale set out to translate the Bible from the original languages into English, but he encounter stiff opposition from both Church and State. Tyndale, who was educated at Oxford, wanted to produce a translation that even "a boy that driveth the plough" could understand. But to accomplish this, he had to flee to Germany, where his English "New Testament" was printed in 1526. When copies were smuggled into England, the authorities were so enraged that they began burning them publicly. Tyndale was later betrayed. Just before he was strangled and his body burned, he uttered these words with a loud voice: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!"

Bible translation continued: the translators would not be stopped. By 1800, at least portions of the Bible had "learned to speak" 68 languages. then, with the formation of Bible Societies-in particular the British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in 1804-the Bible quickly "learned "even more new languages. Young men by the hundreds volunteered to got o foreign lands as missionaries, many with the prime purpose of translating the Bible.

Next time: Learning The Languages Of Africa

A Book For All People, 1997