Reason #58: LDS Leaders’ Linguistic Abilities

After finishing graduate work in linguistics and education at BYU in 1976, I found professional work in the translation department of LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City.  Even though I thought I already knew a lot about language from my study of languages and linguistics, wrestling with semantic problems in the world of translation taught me more of importance than I expected to learn.  My main discovery was how metaphoric language is and how much language interpretation and production is a function of our unconscious beliefs.  I began to see that what we believed the scriptures to say was a reflection of our apriori beliefs.  I began to discover more passages of scripture that the Church held as literal were actually metaphoric, and that many of the stories with historical basis had so much missing that they made more sense as mythic images than literal history.  Literal conceptions suddenly seemed shallow and disappointingly amiss of richer underlying meaning.  I began to see literalism as a default for the absence of true spiritual insight.  I yearned for a better exposition of the underlying truth, but did not find it in the Church.

When translating, one must of course understand the meaning of what is to be translated before it can be rendered in another language.  But this understanding must go well beyond the kind of understanding we normally content ourselves with when we casually read something in our own language.  Because the language into which one translates has a different set of assumptions about reality, and different requirements on what is to be made explicit in language, translators often find themselves in the awkward position of necessarily having to interpolate an author”‘s intended meaning.  Their process of inquiry entails a high degree of scrutiny of the source text and the context from which it sprang.  In making such careful analyses of texts by Church authorities, we found occasional but disconcerting contradictions between authorities and even within the teachings of the same authority.  For example, a book that has attained near standard-work status, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, was found to be riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and implausible authenticity.  We had our way of explaining away such irregularities, but I could not escape the feeling of disappointment in the “oracles of God.”  I began to wonder if the emperor had any clothes.

During my time there, the Church Translation Department was funding a major research and development effort at Brigham Young University on automatic language processing–that is, computer translation of natural language.  There were those at the University who believed they were inspired to do such a thing, which would result in Church scripture and literature going out in multiple languages quickly and effectively.  This vision was easily picked up at the University and at Church headquarters, where inspired vindications of our life are welcome.  The project got a lot or press and was the darling of the then university president, Dallin Oaks, now a high Church authority, who entertained visions of this project bringing fame to the University and hence to the Church.  About ten years and over three million dollars later, it finally became clear that the project was not delivering on its promise, so it was abandoned.  After that, no one mentioned anything about the “divine inspiration” that was supposed to have guided the project.  Actually, what was said was mainly nothing at all.  Though it was the largest line item in our translation budget for years, it didn”‘t even make it into a detailed history of Church translation during that period written by the department director.  It was as if it never happened.  Another senior administrator would not cooperate in a post analysis of the project and sequestered all documentation.  In the world of politics, this would be called a “cover-up.”  Today, inexpensive commercial software is readily available that translates natural languages, but was not written at BYU.  So much for Mormon inspiration, I thought.

In the translation department, I participated in a project to study The Book of Mormon at the finest level of linguistic detail in order to prepare a guide for translators.  For my part of the project, I happened to be assigned to work on that part of The Book of Mormon which contained a description and explanation of an unusual device known as “urim and thummim”–something like crystal eye glasses that could be used for discovering knowledge unavailable to normal perception.  According to The Book of Mormon, those who could use this device were known as “seers” and with it had the power to translate unknown languages.  I reflected on how the present-day leaders of the Church publicly held themselves as “seers,” and that the definition for that term in the Church was this passage in The Book of Mormon.  It necessarily followed that our leaders were claiming to have powers that would enable them to translate.  Yet when those of us in the translation department would take difficult translation problems to these “seers,” not only did they not evidence any particular power to translate, but their opinions were of no better in quality than those of a naïve person.  The best they could offer was not only not helpful to us, but sometimes even retrograde.  To me, it seemed like an obvious failure of our inspired leaders in a primary role they at least nominally held for themselves.

–Robert Bushman

Read his full story here.

For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition:  A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today (Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.