Reflections on Translation

The final chapter in Eugene Petersen's Eat this Book is about translation. He makes the case the Bible was, for the most part, written in the language of the everyday Joe. Our task, as those called to proclaim the Good News, is once again to speak the language of the everyday Joe — in effect to translate from the everyday language of one place and time to the everyday language of another.

I heard similar comments about the role of leadership in Mark Strom's summer school class that I'm currently listening to on my morning walk.

Ironically, our Focus 3 group just received two more books to read on leadership and leadership related things. Both are "christianized" versions of secular writings — books translated from the specialized language of business into the specialized language of church and christianity. A bit of further reflection revealed that there is a huge industry engaged in just such translation — producing everything from leadership books to finance advice to novels in the unique christian dialect we need to be able to understand these things.

If Petersen and Strom are right about our task, you'd think there would be no need or market for such translated books — instead christians would be choosing to read in the language of the "outside" world specifically to learn that language and be better translaters of the Good News.

Curious. And, I think, sad.