Many years ago, I found myself reading a book by Marcel Pagnol. The last paragraph told how his brother had settled into a simple life in the Provence hills, keeping goats and making cheese. Then the last line said simply that he died in the hell of Paschendale, a long way from home. It was beautifully written and it moved me to tears, despite the fact that I am an English speaker and I was reading in French.
This is by way of introducing another of my occasional series about missionary sayings; things said by missionary statesmen which sound great, but which may not quite match up to reality.
Today’s offering comes from the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Cameron Townsend:
Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is like ‘trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.’
I realise that disagreeing with the founder of my own organisation is possibly not a great career move, but this is simply wrong. Firstly, anyone who speaks more than one language with a degree of fluency knows that you can think and experience emotion in languages other than your mother tongue. In fact, there are situations when your second (or third…) language works better than your mother tongue because of its vocabulary and cultural reach.
It’s also inaccurate to say that people can’t be nourished by the Bible, apart from in their mother tongue. Down through history, people have had to work with the Bible in a language that wasn’t theirs; it isn’t ideal, but people have always grown in their faith and understanding through reading the Bible in foreign languages. It still happens today.
One of the key rationales for Bible translation is that there is no sacred Christian language in which our Scriptures, liturgy and prayers must be expressed. This is demonstrated by the fact that the Gospels were written in New Testament Greek, not the Aramaic that Jesus would have spoken. The New Testament was written in a trade language, not in the mother tongue of the early Christians.
The Scriptural basis for Bible translation demonstrates that there is a time and a place for non-mother tongue Scriptures.
There is a solid case for translating the Scriptures rooted in God’s activity through history. Of course, it is also true that people understand better in their mother tongue. However, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water by saying things like there is no nourishment in reading the Bible in another language – that simply doesn’t stand up to examination.
20 replies on “Eating Soup With A Fork”
Totally agree Eddie. There are several verses which work better for me in a language other than English, though on the whole it is easier to connect with it in one’s heart language.
@kouya Oh good. That explains why I get so nourished by reading my Greek New Testament.
😉
Tim Herbert liked this on Facebook.
Your second blog post with the same title.
The perils of blogging for ten years! Your opinions change, but you run out of titles.
I agree but I think it is the context element of language which proves so ‘soup and fork’…Over recent years I have realised just how much of the richness of the social justice message of Scripture has been lost in translation sometimes because of historic translation choices but even more so because of a poor understanding of the richness of those words in their original context….on balance I’d have to agree with the Founder…but for the fact that the Word is alive …
I agree, though I have to say that while I find reading Scripture in another language connects with my understanding, reading in my mother tongue connects with my emotions as well.
Sarah Chhin liked this on Facebook.
the title intrigued me as this is what people with dementia can do if everyone else is eating salad for example, as we ‘copy’ from how others do it we forget what and how. This is true also for understanding scripture we can learn from others who are alongside
Thank you for that. For us of mono tongue and in my case, not even good with English. I am so grateful for the translations I can read.
I tend to think that Western missiology has misunderstood the richness of true multilingualism and defined languages as discrete, siloed artefacts rather than considering languages as fluid and contextualised and used in multiple domains for different purposes. The experience of true multiinguals with many languages in their repertoire requires a more nuanced approach than implying a restriction to one language
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Maybe disagreeing with the founder is less career damaging than implying that 70 years later an organization would still care? 🙂
I was never interested in the Bible until I saw it in a second language, and I’ve used it in that language ever since, much to my blessing. It’s ok orally in my mother tongue, and I’ve gotten used to some of the written translations in the standard language, but in the second, foreign language, it speaks to me.
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Today’s blog post in which I question a statement by the founder of our organisation and talk about multilingualism http://t.co/6tyvle3yaX
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