Does the Book of Mormon (book) sound archaic in other languages?

Factual Questions
1

No preaching. This is not a thread to debate the truth or falsity of the content of the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon was supposedly translated by Joseph Smith into English. Infamously, his final version in English uses a style that was closer to the King James Version of the Bible than the English that was spoken in the US and UK in the mid-1800’s. That is, from the moment it was published it sounded archaic.

I understand that there are translations of the Book of Mormon in other modern languages. Do these translations sound similarly archaic? For example, does the Italian version sound like it was written by Dante or does the Japanese version sound like it was written during the times of the Daimyos?

2

I don’t know anything about other languages, but a Mormon missionary once told me why the English version sounds archaic:
The prophet Joseph Smith was very wise, and knew that by making his translation sound like the classic King James, people would more easily accept it as being equal to the true Bible that they were already familiar with.

So it would seem logical that translations to other languages use the same principle, and try to sound “classic”.
So that leads to another related question: do translations of the Bible in other languages typically use “classic” or archaic language? Does, say, 16th century Italian or German sound classic ( and appropriate for use in church) to a modern speaker?

3

FWIW, there is no “official” explanation for the language used in the Book of Mormon. The one that you will most often hear goes something like this:

“Joseph Smith was a young and unlearned man (early 20s during the translation period, with no real formal schooling). The only scriptural language he knew was the language of the King James translation of the Bible; therefore, for his translation, he mimicked that language.”

As to your main question, the only foreign language translation I am familiar with is Chinese, and it most definitely is NOT archaic sounding, at least as far as the language goes. Having said that, it is often a little odd sounding where the translators had to pick a Chinese phrase to take the place of an English phrase that doesn’t have a good corollary in Chinese (the goal in these translations is not to make a work of art in the foreign language, but to make it as close as possible to the English version). But in doing any of this, they picked Chinese characters and phrases in current use.

As an aside, the Book of Mormon in Chinese is actually pretty easy to read; it’s vocabulary is fairly limited and basic. You can read it pretty well with a knowledge of about 1500 to 2000 characters, whereas reading your average newspaper requires a knowledge of quite a few more than that (maybe 3000 or so)

4

How does Chinese translate “and it came to pass”, and “like un to”?

5

:slight_smile: I dug out an old CHinese Book of Mormon to check these out. “And it came to pass” was one that they did decide to basically leave out. It is sometimes translated with a “then” or something, and sometimes left out completely.

I looked up a few "Like Unto"s. Usually, it is translated as:

像. . . 一樣 (xiang . . . yi yang)

Which basically means “Like . . . the same” and is a fairly standard Chinese phrasing (thought maybe not as common as is found in the BoM).

6

Apparently for Dutch the answer is yes. I don’t have a cite in front of me, but I remember reading somewhere that the Statenvertaling is insisted upon by some Dutch speaking fundamentalists, possibly mirroring the Anglosphere’s “King James Only” movement.

At least to me, there’s a majesty in old fashioned English. Anyone care to put forth an opinion for their own native language? For example, do Spanish speakers today in Mexico have a reverence for the style of language used by Ferdinand and Isabella, or does it just sound old and stop talking like that please it makes you sound like an idiot?

7

I’m familiar with the Portuguese translation. That translation does sound archaic. One example of this is that it uses the archaic “vos” for 2nd person plural instead of the more common and modern “voces.” Likewise if you look at the various passages where the Bible and Book of Mormon have similar or identical passages, the wording is invariably the same as the João Ferreira de Almeida translation of the Bible from the 17th century.

My guess is that the translators were intentionally copying the style and feel of the English version.

8

In Spanish, it uses the relatively rarely used “vosotros” verb form, and does sound old-fashioned. I was deliberately never taught that form in high school and college, “since nobody uses it nowadays”. It may be more common in South America than Latin America, or in Spain, but as a missionary, I regularly encountered native Mexicans who did not know how to use it.

9

Just pointing out that Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is written in made-up archaic style–a masterful one, which, as is obvious in the English title, is followed.

Most good translations will try to get across the style, register, and tone of the original. Now, “good” for the purposes of Holy Writ (writings, texts–see?) is another thing, depending on the purposes of the Holy ones who regulate such things.

Witness the recent revision to the English of the Latin mass, specifically, here and there, to “elevate” the tone in English and give the present-day reader a sense of (respectful, awed) distance from the text.

But like the OP, I wonder how Shakespeare is translated across the board. The rasp and piquancy and sense of distance of 1600 speech and poetry–and the awe how that distance in communicative style and syntax is bridged from depth to depth–is part and parcel for the English hearer and reader.

The famous Schlegel translation is wonderful, but I get 19th century, even though grand, lyric, when appropriate, but still it’s Schlegel.

A radical attempt to address this is the 20th century Buber-Rosensweig translation of the Bible, trying to get the roughness back from a more direct “stepwise” translation the Hebrew, so to speak, when appropriate. But the syntax and brevity of the Hebrew has is own bandwidth, where the language’s roughness and honey–with the genius of the Bible’s many writers–establish different boundaries than their word-for-wordiness into the German permits. Luther here, but with help, is thei German’s Shakespeare, as I frame the discussion here.

10

FWIW, I have a collection of sort-of rare large polyglot Bibles.

11

Not Spanish, Catalan, French, Galego or Italian. Those are the languages in which I’ve heard Mass understanding the readings fully, rather than just recognizing the story thanks to one or two nouns.

“The rarely used vosotros verb form”? :confused: Rarely-used in some places, but heavily used in Spain or Costa Rica to name two (the one the Ticos didn’t use was ustedes); almost never in Argentina or Uruguay.

12

For most LatinAmericans “vosotros” has a distinct Catholic/Bible/Religious feeling because we used to have Bibles/Missal transalted for Castillian Spanish and many Spanish priests came here.

There’s even the old joke of the Peruvian guy going to Spain. He comes back and tell his friend “Everyone talks like a priest there”.

13

But it’s a “another dialect” feeling, not an “archaic” one. Hearing vos used without the rest of the signs that make up the Argentinian family of dialects sounds archaic to me; having it used with the rest of the dialect sounds* ché* - as well it should!

14

The Book of Mormon used to sound archaic/stilted in Korean. That is, it did until a new translation into Korean was promulgated on 1 July 2005. Many of the Korean LDS of my acquaintance find it to be more readable than the previous translation. IIRC, the 2005 edition is the third translation into Korean.

15

Interesting. One thing about the Book of Mormon that isn’t true about the Bible is that the CoJCoLDS more or less does the translations themselves and publishes them in-house. The Catholic Church accepts several translations of the Bible, some of which were done by Catholics and others that were done by Protestants, but all of which were reviewed and deemed to be non-heretical. Many Protestant churches have no hard and fast rules on which translations are acceptable.

Are there any independent translations of the Book of Mormon? Are they accepted by the LDS church? Have any of the smaller Mormon/LDS groups like the Community of Christ done their own parallel translations?

It seems like it would be possible to do this legally. Because the first edition of the Book of Mormon was published before 1923 in the US, it is public domain here and in theory anyone can translate it and distribute or sell their version.

16

By the way, this Wiki entry says the Book of Mormon, in whole or in part, has been translated into 108 languages.

17

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints only approves of “in-house” translations of the Book of Mormon and such translations must be specifically commissioned by the Church. In other words, no mustang efforts.

The Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has its own translations. You can see which ones are available at their publishing arm, Herald House. Another book Herald House offers is Divergent Paths of the Restoration, written by a guy who grew up in the LDS church and then converted to RLDS. That particular volume lists all of the churches, extant and defunct, that traced back to Joseph Smith, Jr. and it also informs which version of the Book of Mormon the particular church uses. I used to have another nifty thing Herald House sold: a verse number converter to determine which LDS edition verse corresponded to which RLDS/CoC verse and vice versa.

AFAIK, the text of the Book of Mormon is not copyrighted in any way. It is, rather, the notes and chapter headings that are copyrighted.

18

Japanese is similar, with there being an archaic sounding earlier translation that my sister used on her mission in the early 90’s, and a newer one my wife started using in the 2000’s. Don’t know excatly when the newer translation came out. As noted for Korean, people did find the old one hard to read.

19

The Tahitian Book of Mormon is not nearly as archaic as the Tahitian Bible. It is arranged in books, chapters, and verses like the Bible so a lot of potential converts remark that it feels like scripture, but it is missing a lot of the superfluous particle words that the Tahitian Bible contains.

20

A new French translation came out in 1999. I don’t remember if the new one was more archaic or less. IIRC, a lot of the tu got switched to vous, or maybe vice versa. But even the French Bible they use (LDS in Tahiti) isn’t very archaic so it makes sense the BoM translators didn’t try too hard to mimic old French.