Author: David M. Hare

I have tried in the last few posts to explain some of the characteristics of a good translation. To build up to accuracy, I also discussed the meaning of words, explication, and audience. Another of the characteristics of a good translation is known as clarity. Clarity is a value in Bible translation, in part, because historically Protestants have believed that the Scriptures are understandable. The Reformers referred to the issue not as clarity, but as perspicuity (a word we don’t usually use now because…it’s not easy to understand). The word perspicuity means “the quality of being clear and easy to…

This is the fourth blog post responding to the recent post by my friend Aaron Shryock called What is Accuracy in Bible Translation? Here are links to those posts with some important takeaways: This leads me to my definition of accuracy: A translation is accurate when the original message is communicated to a new audience. No meaning should be added, removed, or changed in the translation. If I understood his position well, I think Aaron would identify my definition with communicative accuracy, something that he believes is more akin to clarity. On the website I just linked to, you will…

This is the third part of a series on translation responding to a recent post by Aaron Shryock called What is Accuracy in Bible Translation? It probably would be helpful to read the other two posts first: On Meaning and On Audience, but here are some major takeaways from those two posts: With this background in mind, I would like to discuss something that Aaron mentions in his post, which is what translators call “explication.” Explicit and Implicit Information In order to understand explication you have to first understand that in human communication, we always say less than we mean….

In my last post (On Meaning) I began the build up to responding to a post by my friend Aaron Shryock regarding accuracy in Bible translation. In that post I made a claim that “while meaning in the source text can be discovered apart from the audience, meaning in the receptor language is very audience-dependant.” For context, when translating we take a source text (in our case, the Bible) and translate that text into a receptor language (Kwakum). In this post, I want to explain how meaning can be audience-dependant. Meaning in the Source Text is not Audience-Dependant First, I…

I recently read a post by a friend of mine, Aaron Shyrock called What is Accuracy in Bible Translation?. I want to address some of the concerns that Aaron brought up in regards to accuracy, but I felt that it was first necessary to discuss the meaning of “meaning.” A while ago I wrote a blog that made the claim that all Translation is Meaning-Based. Check out that post if you want to see what I mean by that. As far as I know, Aaron would not disagree with this idea. When we translate (the Bible or anything else) we…

We have been dealing with a lot of issues on our translation team recently. Amidst deaths and funerals and the daily difficulties, we recently had to let one of our translators go because of sexual immorality. Another confessed that he had nearly fallen into the same sin. We spent an entire week just thinking through the Christian response to sin, and how we can seek righteousness. In our discussions, we tread that fine line between demanding righteousness and recognizing weakness/offering grace. Because of a small view of sexual sin, our actions to remove a translator seemed to some to be…

A few years ago, when we still had young kids, we hired a young Kwakum woman to come and help us with cooking and cleaning in our home. She came to us one day and said that she wouldn’t be able to work for a week because one of her family members had died. The reason she wanted a week off was that the Kwakum have funeral celebrations that last for six days. They spend all six days at the burial site, they sleep next to the tomb, and they spend all that time with their family. So, attending this…

Stacey and I (Dave) have continued the three-week cycle in and out of the village. While the translation project remains our primary focus, whenever we are in the village we continue in evangelism, discipleship, and literacy. One world view issue that keeps coming up regards how we treat the weak and the poor. Here is Stacey’s account of an experience that she recently had in the village: ”It breaks my heart to say that those who are unable to have children, or the handicapped, or the unmarried are often called witches, their possessions are stolen, and they are treated as…

Last week I wrote a blog about how fear for safety keeps many people from considering missions, especially when it comes to raising children on the field. One of my points in that blog is that missions is not a monolith. The risks that my missionary friends in Mexico face are different from the ones we face, which are still different than the risks my friends in Ireland face. So, any advice I could give would either be very specific to Cameroon, or very general. That said, here are three general tips for mitigating risks in missions: 1. Join a…

A few months ago, I read a blog in which some missionaries were talking about a difficult event that occurred with their children. In the comments on that post, a woman wrote something to the effect of: “If you have young children, it is clear: God has not called you to missions.” I was not really surprised. People have asked us questions about our children throughout the years that belied the same assumption: missionaries are unable to keep their children safe on the mission field. I have found that the main reason people do not consider missions is because of…