Portrait of a Translator: Francis Seely and the 1971 Revision of the Thai Bible (Liao 2025)

SIL’s Journal of Translation is proud to announce the publication of the third article of 2025:

Portrait of a Translator: Francis Seely and the 1971 Revision of the Thai Bible

Liao, Doug. 2025. “Portrait of a Translator: Francis Seely and the 1971 Revision of the Thai Bible.” Journal of Translation 21 (1): 35–57. https://doi.org/10.54395/JOT-DLPFS71.

Abstract

Two of the most famous portraits of a translator are paintings by Caravaggio (1571–1610) of Jerome (c. 342/347–420). Francis Seely (1917–2004) was an American missionary who helped revise the Thai Bible in the 1950s and ’60s, and left behind numerous workbooks from that translation project. This article examines what these workbooks show us about Seely’s community, concerns, and character, and uses these insights to offer an alternative picture to Caravaggio’s masterful paintings of a translator. The paper concludes by considering how a portrait of a modern Bible translator might differ from those of Jerome and Seely.

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