Translators (a bit long)

From: Don Wilkins (dwilkins@ucr.campus.mci.net)
Date: Tue Dec 08 1998 - 16:27:50 EST


I have been enjoying replies from list members describing their personal
experiences with their children and Classical/Biblical languages, mostly
off-list, and I think that a summary might be interesting. I hope I will
not discourage further replies by summing up what I have seen so far. First,
those who wrote appear to be model parents who place their children's
wellfare above all, do whatever they can to encourage them toward the better
things in life, including language studies, and support their career
choices. Dealing with the career choices is no doubt difficult from
situation to situation, and one list member told me frankly that he would
not be comfortable if his son or daughter chose a career that did not bode
well for financial security. I noticed that some of the careers chosen, such
as music, were areas that traditionally do not guarantee financial success,
but the parents seemed just as happy about these careers as the more
conventional ones. Again, that undoubtedly is a mark of good parenting.
Second, what of careers that focus on translation, or more particularly on
Bible translation? If I am not mistaken--and I beg for correction
otherwise--none of the children has chosen missions or another occupation
involving Bible translation, but one or two have chosen academic careers
that do involve other kinds of translation.
Third, as to education, several children have taken a classical language or
have received some exposure to one through their parents, as one would hope
would be true of the list members, but none have majored in Greek or
Classics (again, I beg for correction). At least one went to a seminary or
divinity school, however it did not appear that s/he concentrated on
biblical languages.
I would like to make a speculative extrapolation and propose that those who
have replied, and (hopefully) others who will, are most likely to have had
children who have made some connection with the languages. I.e., this is
clearly not a scientific poll, but I'm guessing that those with "success
stories" in this regard (allowing that all the accounts I read are success
stories in their own right) are more likely to have replied than those whose
experiences have been otherwise. If that is true, then we perhaps have here
a microcosm of our best hopes for future students of languages and for
future translators. By contrast, I would find it hard to believe that more
children with these goals would come from parents who were unacquainted with
the value of the languages and related careers; surely we should expect this
instead to be infertile ground, though there are bound to be exceptions.
While I concur that their children's welfare is the highest priority and
responsibility of the parents, the bottom line for education in the
languages (especially classical/biblical) and related careers seems to be
that the status quo will continue. Perhaps Metzger addressed the student
enrollment problem in his speech (regretfully I was unable to attend), but
if not, it seems to me that colleges and universities will have to offer
classical/biblical languages on principle rather than in response to student
demand, and administrators are increasingly becoming reluctant to do that. I
have personally seen (and suffered from) this at institutions whose mission
would have appeared to prioritize language courses on principle. I don't
know where this will lead in regard to English Bible translation, because
the demand for jobs there, as small as it may be, will probably meet or
exceed the supply well into the future; but the situation does not bode well
for Bible translation in other languages. That work will probably continue
to rely primarily on special organizations devoted to the purpose (e.g.
Wycliff BT and SIL) who--I assume--provide limited training in the biblical
languages in-house. Thank God for their work, but I still wish that formal
education in classical/biblical languages played the primary role in both
English and non-English translation.

Don Wilkins

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