If Joseph 'saw the words in English'

[_Daniel Peterson]

When Joseph Smith dictated "steel" he must have meant "steel." When he dictated "horse," he must have meant horse.

Right?

I don't know the degree or nature of the influence of Joseph's mind/spirit/background/intentions on the selection of words during the translation process.

If you do, feel free to explain the way things were. There's no need to try to recruit me to support your position.

[_antishock8]

Fat Man:

"I don't know how true the Book of Mormon is; I just know it is true."

[_Mister Scratch]

When Joseph Smith dictated "steel" he must have meant "steel." When he dictated "horse," he must have meant horse.

Right?

I don't know the degree or nature of the influence of Joseph's mind/spirit/background/intentions on the selection of words during the translation process.

If you do, feel free to explain the way things were. There's no need to try to recruit me to support your position.

Ever heard of Occam's Razor?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Ever heard of Occam's Razor?

Yes. I have.

[_beastie]

What an immensely entertaining thread.

by the way, my all-time favorite explanation of the translation is the hybrid theory: sometimes tight, sometimes loose. As needed, of course. Tight when apologists are claiming remarkable hebraisms in the text, loose when apologists are dismissing the myriad of anachronisms in the text.

Talk about ad hoc!!

[_Daniel Peterson]

I'm happy to entertain you. We fools hope to provide at least some benefit to our betters. It's the only real justification for our existence.

When I translate -- and I translate every day, typically from at least three languages -- I sometimes translate very tightly and I sometimes translate very loosely.

Reading Surat Yusuf from the Qur’an with my Arabic 425R seminar this afternoon, much of the chapter was pretty easily translated in a tight way, but some of the phrases are, in my opinion, utterly impossible to render into comprehensible English except via paraphrase.

I'm not quite sure why this would strike anybody as particularly odd -- unless, of course, that person knows no foreign languages.

[_Mister Scratch]

I'm happy to entertain you. We fools hope to provide at least some benefit to our betters. It's the only real justification for our existence.

When I translate -- and I translate every day, typically from at least three languages -- I sometimes translate very tightly and I sometimes translate very loosely.

But, Dan---you just said that you believed Joseph read the words in English. That is, I think you'll have to admit, a good deal different than what you're describing.

[_Daniel Peterson]

But, Dan---you just said that you believed Joseph read the words in English. That is, I think you'll have to admit, a good deal different than what you're describing.

Different, yes. But not relevantly different.

If, as I've suggested, Joseph's personality, background, psychology, etc., played a role in the translation process, it wasn't mechanical.

And translating via a seer stone, however that might work, would not seem to alter the character of the language from which the translation is being made: Idiomatic expressions, hapax legomena, and the like, would still occur in the same frequencies, whatever the method of translation. No language is isomorphic to another. Not even contemporary languages from similar cultures and the same linguistic family. But the language of the Nephites was ancient, from a very foreign culture and a completely distinct linguistic family.

[_beastie]

What a remarkable and happy coincidence that Joseph's decision to either use the words on the seer stone, or to paraphrase, in his own words, a language he didn't know - happen to coincide so nicely to the needs of today's apologists. Why, it almost seems designed to do so.

[_Chap]

Of course if he wants to indicate to us that the words he is recorded as uttering on the PBS transcript, in particular these

"It's kind of a strange image for us today, but it sort of makes sense if you think of a computer screen, I suppose: You don't want to be looking at [anything] against a bright background; it hurts your eyes. ... He would read off what he saw in the stone, apparently in passages of about 25 to 35 words. ..."

do not represent what he wanted to convey when he spoke, that would be fine. We all slip up sometimes.

There was no slip-up. I was talking about the exclusion of ambient light, which makes it easier to read from a computer screen and presumably, by analogy, also from the seer stone -- which, if the accounts are accurate, seems to have functioned something like a computer display (e.g., with illuminated letters) in terms of visibility.

I didn't say that the seer stone and/or Urim and Thummim functioned altogether in the manner of a computer. Beware the fallacy of the perfect analogy.

As I commented at the beginning of this thread, I don't know how the translation process functioned. I don't believe that anybody really does or ever did who has not experienced it personally. Joseph pointedly declined to answer questions about the process. But I do not believe that it functioned mechanically, the way a computer puts out data. My computer doesn't care what mood I'm in, whether I've had a fight with my wife, or anything of that sort. Joseph, however, was unable to translate after a quarrel with Emma until he had reconciled with her. That suggests to me a degree of subjective involvement or interaction in a process that was anything but automatic and mechanical.

To repeat: I don't know how the process worked. Which is why I'm skeptical of confident claims that the process excludes human foibles, makes amgibuity impossible, was verbally inerrant, etc. I simply can't affirm such statements. There is no firm basis to say that they're true, and there is at least some basis for saying that they're false.

OK Houston, we have clarification. So now it is confirmed that:

the seer stone [...], if the accounts are accurate, seems to have functioned something like a computer display (e.g., with illuminated letters) in terms of visibility.

It is however also noted that:

Joseph, however, was unable to translate after a quarrel with Emma until he had reconciled with her.

Suppose we accept that this second claim is the case (what is the documentary source for this claim, by the way? I am not denying the evidence exists, just asking). Clearly all we are entitled to deduce from the fact alleged is that whether or not the letters were visible depended on Smith's emotional (or moral) state at the time.

No evidence is however cited here to establish the point that, when letters were visible on the stone, the content or accuracy of the text represented by those letters in any way depended on Smith's emotional (or moral) state at the time. I don't think that any early source ever suggests that was the case - Smith is never represented as saying (for instance) 'Oliver, we must re-do our work of this morning; my feelings were out of order, and I fear that I did not read the stone aright.'

So when we are told that there was

a degree of subjective involvement or interaction in a process that was anything but automatic and mechanical

it would be prudent to realise that there is no evidence that the effects of the "subjective involvement or interaction" went beyond Smith being able to read letters off the stone or not being able to do so. We have no reason, for instance, to suppose that Smith's emotional state ever led him to read off 'steel', when he would, in a better adjusted state, have read 'copper'.

So in this exchange:

Do you believe [Smith's emotional state] affected whether or not words like "horse," "cumom," and "curelom" appeared in the stone?

Very possibly.

it would seem that if DCP's response is intended to convey that the choice between (for instance) 'horse' or 'curelom' appearing depended on Smith's emotional state, then that is no more than speculation on DCP's part, unsupported by evidence.