THE UNBUILDING OF BABEL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1666, 3 February 1904, Page 78 (Supplement)

THE UNBUILDING OF BABEL.

The Englishman, accustomed to find his mother tongue suffi.oo his needs in the world's great centres, seldom realises howlimited after all is its actual utility onco lie leaves the main commercial high ways of civilisation. Only experienced travellers can measure the results of Babel - "and appreciate the consequences of the Confusion of tongues. The forthcoming -cenitenaa'y <of the British and '"Foreign v Bible Society recalls the fact that at the time the society, was founded—7th Mai ah, 19(M>—the Bib'e'-was current in about forty languages, while to-day the Bible, or se me . portion of it has been translated into * oyer 400 diffe<reiiiß languages, and of these <yyer 370 appear on the so-' iety's list. Few - ‘people - unconnected: with the. work can form any idea of the labour that has been expended by .yf. train*lators during the jpast century in order ; to reduce the spoken tongues of myriad's „-v of savages to written form j and' still more J difficult is it to' realise. the danger as well:, aa .the drudgery which the work has yeafs in Tahiti to perfect': himself iiifiiy the language of' the island,' and then ideypted another twenty years to translat;tnjg %ho i»or!ptures into Taliitan. In reporting on thb :IN aga language, 'Spoken in the. Assam Hills, a philological .. .i^P^rt'Writes: -—o there is some con fusion l as i to..thiß ‘ language and'h -6 dialeoc® and people have a habit ; killing the" officer in:feharge of' the 'dis- : ..jfcncrfi ill: which.-they are sun-; se J. So re- : •idet” This, is a possibility w). n k„ m ' ■ 7.5. T "r- .

•tunately has only too often threatened 1 The society's workers. 1 f When Dr. Morrison, the Pioneer Protestant missionary to China, arrived in Canton in 1807, for the especial purpose of translating the Scriptures, he had to work with the utmost secrecy. Even, the best known foreign merchants were allowed to reside in Canton (unaccompanied by their wives) only for one-half of the year; the other half they had to live in the Portuguese settlement of Macao, while the death penalty was over any native who assisted a foreigner in the study of the language. Morrison entered Canton, in a business capacity, and became translator to the Bast India Company, which provided him with a hiding place where he corn'd carry on Bible translation. This was in a warehouse.used for tho storage, of merchandise, which - was lighted by small!! Windows in the roof. A low tunnel through which a man could sreep, was constructed of boxes and -bales from the door for about half the length of the building, then up to tho roof and back to the gable, then down to the floor on the other Side, and on to the end of the swall. i In this way it wandered on and on—a perfect maze—till it ended in a corner, where boxes were built up so as to form a shaft to the skylight. Here Morrison worked—with two Ciuinese scholars whose confidence he had gained'—• until the colossal task he had underioaken ,wad completed.' He dared not ask tho natives to his house; and so great was their dread of defection that they never came to assist him without bringing arsenic with which to poison themselves should they be discovered! by the Mandarins. On the preparation and publication of this Chmeiss Bible the Societyexpended Jilt,ooo. And to convey some idea of me labour involved in acquiring this language in the hist instance, it may be menuonedl that in Kiang Fu's Chinese dictionary there* are no fewer than 43,410 separate and differently written symbols. In the Wenli Chinese Bible 5150. separate characters are employed. Even in Amhario, a Semitic language widely spoken in Abyssinia, there are 267 different characters. What a puzzlement bo the English mind are such complex languages after the simplicity of our own alphabet!

but the difficulty of translating the Bible into a language that has already a literature of its own is as nothing when compared with the task of translating a single Gospel into a speech of some barbarous tribe. First of all, that speech must be learnt by daily familiar intercourse with the savages ‘themselves. Then it must be reduced to writing and grammar—an arduous and perplexing task. Then there still remains the most trying problem of all, which is to discover term® that will convey to these ignorant primitive folk the moral and spiritual ideas of Christianity. They have no means and no thoughts to correspond with the elemental ideas of the Gospel. What does a cannibal understand of such terms a® faith, hope and Jove? Sometimes'it is impossible adequately to represent the sounds by the letters of our alphabet. In some oases the missionaries have im troduoedi signs of their own to indicate certain of these sounds for which our alphabet provide® no corresponding letter. In the early stages of his work the translator is obliged to rely to some extent on the assistance of natives, revising the work as he himself becomes more familiar with the language. In British Columbia a missionary wanted his catechist to translate p “A crown of glory that fadeth not away.” This was done to the satisfaction of all! concerned; but in process of time the missionary •bund to bits horror that it had been rendered, "A hat that never wear® out.”

A missionary translator in Hew Guinea

was wrestling with the word love, and asked his native assistant what term the people would use to express their Buninas® for whatever they held 1 dearest on earth. The native promptly supplied! the massing word. On closer acquaintance with the language, however, the missionary was appeal-old to find out that the word he had) used signified) to the natives "a liking for putrid) meat.” In Now Caledonia there is one sets of numeral® reserved! exclusively for Men, another for bird®, another for fishes, efo. Confusion, therefore, resulted at first, before the missionaries grasped this peculiarity in ' the language, one having translated St. Matthew, xviii, 20, as "Where two or three (fishes) are gathered together.” Despite the widie extent.of work accomplished during the Bible Society's first century, much still, remains to be done. There are millions of the human race speaking languages into which not so much as a single gospel bas yet leva, translated, while many- existing versions

are urgently ini need of revision; And! in older to meet the many imperious fresh claims that are pressing upon me surety from every side, it is proposed- to celebrate it® hundredth birthday by raising a special centenary fund of at least 250,000 guinea®, to which, tho King and 1 the - Prince of Wales have alrexiy cgl- ; tribuited, and which is to be demote I to v the enlargement of the society 3 ® work in. all departments. • ' y