Naming translators
Hi everyone, I'm curious to know whether translators/translation committees/translation consultants are ever named in contemporary Bible translations (published by UBS or other Bible agencies)? I was reading the UBS "Guidelines for Interconfessional Cooperation in Translating the Bible" (1988) and noticed the following in section 1.2.3:
"It is not the practice of the United Bible Societies to associate the names of translators or revisers with translations of the Scriptures."
I find this intriguing. When I pick up a Bible version (I'm talking about English here!) I'm always curious to know who has been involved, what their credentials are, what their biases might be, and so on. I think the widespread acceptance of the 1952 revision of Te Paipera Tapu (the Māori Bible) in New Zealand is in large part due to people knowing who was involved in that project.
Of course, naming the individuals involved also poses the risk that the translation or organisation could be discredited by association.
I would love to hear experiences and thoughts around this.
EDIT: Of course, as soon as I published this I found this other thread with a similar discussion: https://map.bloomfire.com/posts/4449878-should-bible-translators-be-named
But feel free to weigh in here if you want!
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I recall when some of the earlier "modern" translations were being published, people on the internet would make entire websites about how "such and such is a satanist" or "such and such has a xyz secret agenda", etc.
Certainly avoiding names of people protects a translation from this type of situation. It seems to me that this type of "attack something by attacking someone associated with it" has only gotten worse over time. I am sure it wouldn't be hard to imagine a situation where a certain discredited pastor had a connection to a bible translation, and the negative impact it would have. Often these types of tangental attacks shouldn't be given weight and are illegitimate, but sadly people are swayed by these types of things.
Although counter to that, in my opinion, translators should be named unless they are from a country in which doing this would be unsafe. It transparency and openness would enable a more open discussion in the church about translation questions.
In Tanzania, I have never come across translators who want to have their names on the Bible, they would usually think it inappropriate.
In any case, the list would be long - you would need to go back to the start of the project and try and name everyone who had contributed. What we do, however, is to state in the preface that the review committee of community and church representatives have given their approval to the translation, and this makes it in some way "theirs"
Thanks for your response, Jay. I can definitely see the risks involved in naming individuals. One of the translators I work with is adamant that his name shouldn't appear in the Bible, even though he is known as the principal translator by the community. Perhaps one solution is to make the information available on a website, so there is at least some separation from the final printed or digital product.
Thanks to both of you. Interesting to hear about Github, although I'm not sure many people would want that level of detail for every Bible translation decision.
Daniel, the situation you describe in Tanzania sounds familiar here in NZ. Our translators are generally reluctant to put their names out there, but at least with one of our projects it is a question I receive constantly. People want assurance that those involved are expert and orthodox, etc.