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by Translation Consultant Cathy Hodsdon  My husband Ross and I began our ministry nearly 40 years ago with a primitive group in the Amazon. At that time Bible translation meant giving the gospel of Jesus Christ to a tribe that had never heard it. When we completed the New Testament, there was little serious thought about doing a translation of the Old Testament. Our pastors could all read basic Portuguese, so they could use the Portuguese Old Testament for study. Few translators of that generation ever translated a complete Bible. We were convinced that most tribal groups would only need the New Testament.
How wrong we were! Time has shown that not only is the Old Testament needed in most languages in its own right, but the New Testament cannot be fully understood by tribal pastors unless they have the Old Testament in their mother tongue. Believers in most parts of the world are used to seeing complete Bibles in other languages. For this reason many would rather possess an entire Bible that was poorly translated or is in a language other than their mother tongue, than to possess only a well-translated New Testament in their own language.
Old Testament translating presents some similar and some completelydifferent challenges compared to what New Testament translators and consultants face. Before a trained native translator can begin to translate an Old Testament book, a consultant must spend hours with him discussing the concepts and vocabulary that are unique to the Old Testament.
There are different types of vocabulary problems. One of them is technical vocabulary. For instance, a book like Leviticus contains numerous words used to describe the tabernacle while the Samuels and Kings contain terms used to describe ancient battles. Those objects and their ancient practices do not exist today, and the tribal people usually have no established literature that would provide the needed vocabulary. The consultant must help the translators truly understand the item or event so that they can look for an accurate means of describing them in their own language.
Another vocabulary problem is meaning shift. Sometimes an Old Testament word has assumed a New Testament meaning. For instance, many native pastors use the word redemption as a synonym for atonement, but this is not its Old Testament meaning. The Hebrew root of atonement is to cover. The shedding of the blood of the sacrifices only covered the sins that had been committed. Redemption did not occur until Christ paid for the sin; therefore, a new, more accurate word for atonement is needed.
A third problem is that of a wealth of synonyms in the Old Testament. Translators who struggled to discover two or three ways to express a concept in the New Testament find themselves looking for eight or more vocabulary items for the Old Testament. For instance, the Old Testament has many words for sin such as evil, transgression, trespass, ungodliness, wickedness, guilt, iniquity, and bad. Many of these words occur in the same verse, so translators need to have a way to express each unique term. Another example of this problem is the distinction the Old Testament makes between varieties of locusts and stages of their lives. There are ten different Hebrew words used to describe these insects. The translator must know the differences between each one in order to find a corresponding word in his language.
These are only a few challenges in a complicated task, but the Lord has created languages in such a way that each one can express the whole Word of God. The goal is to discover the unique way in which each language does so. Time has shown that with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we can always arrive at a satisfactory translation so that every tribe might receive the whole counsel of God.
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