What is it about?
In this article I analyse how Adoniram Judson translated the small prophetic book of Zephaniah into Burmese, in order to draw some conclusions about his translation style.
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Why is it important?
In Myanmar, although there are several other good translations of the bible into Burmese, the Judson Version is virtually the only Burmese bible used by Christians in the country. It was the first Burmese translation of the bible, published in 1840, making it somewhat dated. People say different things about the Judson Version, for example, it is like the King James Version, or it is a very literal translation, or Judson's Hebrew was very weak, and so on. These are unsubstantiated opinions, and very little analysis of Judson's translation has been published. My article gives such an analysis, providing some concrete data and conclusions drawn from that data.
Perspectives
I think the article serves its purpose well in giving a detailed analysis of a small but complete text, Zephaniah, that Judson translated into Burmese. It's not the final word on the Judson Version, by any means, and I hope that it will stimulate some discussion, and help to better understand the nature of Judson's translation. I am now working on a new article which highlights the importance of Judson being a product of the biblical studies movement in early 19th century New England. This forthcoming article will dovetail well with this present article.
Dr John Hans de Jong
Laidlaw College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: An Analysis of Adoniram Judson’s Translation of Zephaniah, The Bible Translator, April 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2051677016670234.
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