The “mentalese” translation theory

[drumdude]

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... f-gardner/

Clearly, then, Joseph did not translate the plates in the way that intermediate students of Hebrew or Greek labor to translate a short homework passage into their native languages. His translation was initiated by divine transmission of the meaning assigned to the characters on the plates by their original writers. At first, Joseph found it easiest to receive this transmission by means of the interpreters, a large spectacle-like device that was buried with the plates, or with one of the two seer stones that he had found and used during his adolescence, as many in his neighborhood did.

(Parenthetically, “dowsers” and other adepts were—and probably still are—routinely consulted in the northern Vermont farming community where I spent my summers as a girl. As a constant witness of the cruel unpredictability of our neighbors’ harvests, I could easily understand the comfort that extra-rational talismans and beliefs offered.)

Joseph placed the seer stone in a hat to block out the light and used it to focus on the interpretation he was receiving, though by the time Joseph moved on to later translation projects he had no need of those physical aids.

Some interested parties have argued that these aids provided a text that Joseph merely needed to read aloud. This is bolstered by several first-person narratives recalling Joseph’s careful and specific spelling of unfamiliar names, which were apparently given to him letter-by-letter. However, Gardner’s analysis of such recollections establishes that such care was only taken the first time an unfamiliar name appeared.

Instead, Gardner is among a growing number of Book of Mormon scholars who argue that Joseph’s mind received revelation as blocks of pre-verbal knowledge—what Gardner refers to as “mentalese.” Joseph then projected or imagined these impressions into being in the form of visions, which he then attempted to describe verbally. Gardner quotes Kathleen Flake’s study of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible:

It appears that when he read he saw events, not words. What he saw, he verbalized to a scribe. . . . Arguably, then, ‘translate’ expressed Smith’s experience of ‘study[ing] it out in [his mind’ or his sense of agency in front of the text. Smith did not think of himself as God’s stenographer. Rather, he was an interpreting reader, and God the confirming authority.

Translating for Early American Readers

The Lord began the translation process by transmitting a correct interpretation of the text composed by the original authors to Joseph through revelation. But more work had to be done before the interpretation could become a translation fully comprehensible to its target readers. As Gardner explains,

because the translation’s original 1830 audience had virtually nothing in common with the purported original language and culture recorded on the golden plates, what might have been effective communication when the Nephite text was finalized around AD 400 would be less effective with its primary audience fourteen centuries later. . . . [It] required modifications of some sort for the translation to be comprehensible to its first readers.

Joseph’s part in the project of translation was to act as an “inter-cultural mediator,” framing the divine interpretation of the plates with forms that would signal that the Book of Mormon was indeed a second witness of God to the people of his time and place. To do so, Joseph used the pseudo-biblical language conditioned by the King James version of the Bible that signaled authoritative public discourse in both religious and secular contexts to early nineteenth-century Americans. He also took care to publish the Book of Mormon in volumes that were the same size and binding of the most commonly used Bibles in America and Britain.

An effective translation can’t help but generate its own artifacts, which is to say expressions or images meaningful to the target audience that are not part of the original text. Examples of such artifacts are easily found in the King James translation of the Bible. Neither St. Matthew nor his audience knew of candles or candlesticks, yet we accept the translation “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick” (Matthew 5:15) without quibbling about small oil lamps. So, when Joseph, who presumably knew nothing about the animals of pre-conquest Mesoamerica, writes about “flocks” and “other sheep,” those who are more knowledgeable can recognize the misattributions as artifacts produced by a translator describing unfamiliar realities to the nineteenth-century farmers that made up his audience.

Gardner argues that Joseph’s dictation of his translation to a scribe leaves its own trail of artifacts. One of his examples points to the incomplete and run-on sentences in the Book of Mormon. Across cultures, the mind can hold on to about thirty seconds of speech before needing to be refreshed. Gardner found that:

The difference between the typical completed sentences and the various examples of incomplete sentences lies in the combination of a dangling verb and a quantity of intervening clauses. When at least three clauses followed the initial hanging verb, Joseph typically lost track of the hanging verbal clause and did not resolve it. That is consistent with the capacity of short-term memory list items. The interrupted nature of the translation added time to the dictation and thus increased the memory load. In these cases, the memory tax was so high that the sentences were left without resolution.

You will have to read the book to discover Gardner’s other, equally fascinating, insights into the evidence that Joseph’s translation left of itself.

Mentalese should be taken in moderate doses, as overindulging can lead to unintended leakage and release. Do not combine with the sister product, “Colon Blow,” or severe dehydration can occur.

[Gadianton]

Gardner is among a growing number of Book of Mormon scholars who argue that Joseph’s mind received revelation as blocks of pre-verbal knowledge—what Gardner refers to as “mentalese.” Joseph then projected or imagined these impressions into being in the form of visions, which he then attempted to describe verbally.

Joseph Smith first received some kind of abstract a-symbolic knowledge. This a-symbolic knowledge then becomes symbols in the form of pictures. The pictures then become words. But the words happen to be right out of the KJV Isaiah?

(seems to contradict Skousen's work; all that money for nothing)

[drumdude]

Perhaps he had a mentalese image of plagiarizing the KJV, which led him to actually do it.

Dan, can I have a spot at Interpreter now? I can multiply complexities better than anyone!

[Everybody Wang Chung]

(seems to contradict Skousen's work; all that money for nothing)

[Doctor Scratch]

(seems to contradict Skousen's work; all that money for nothing)

A great point, and I admit that I’m baffled that there has been no attempt whatsoever to deny that Skousen has profited from Mopologetics. In a sense, it’s as if Interpreter has existed to pay Skousen’s bills.

[Dr. Shades]

. . . I’m baffled that there has been no attempt whatsoever to deny that Skousen has profited from Mopologetics.

In FAIRness, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of his work has been to reconstruct the words that fell from the lips of Joseph Smith as he dictated the Book of Mormon, not apologetics per se.

In a sense, it’s as if Interpreter has existed to pay Skousen’s bills.

His bills were paid as he undertook this project long before Interpreter existed.

[Kishkumen]

Perhaps he had a mentalese image of plagiarizing the KJV, which led him to actually do it.

[huckelberry]

Perhaps he had a mentalese image of plagiarizing the KJV, which led him to actually do it.

I do not understand calling the Isaiah material plagiarism, it is clear about its source. This proposal from Mr Gardner fits with the decision to rely on KJ for ease

I am struck however by the thought that this proposal brings unto question the idea that word prints show Joseph not the author due to changing voice. As best I understand word print studies presume a close word for word translation in order to detect word preferences of original author.

[Physics Guy]

If I have this right, Nephites carved glyphs into plates, God made a video based on the Nephite script and sent it to Joseph as a series of short visions, and Smith made a transcript of the video in his own best Bible-ese imitation of the King James Old Testament. The only connection between the plates and the Book of Mormon is that the ideas that came to Smith are supposed to have been based on the plates, by God.

First of all, this makes it even harder to see why the plates were important than it is in other head-in-hat depictions of the “translation” process. If letters appeared on the stone in the hat, to make a “tight” translation of the plates, then it’s hard to see why Smith needed to have the plates themselves. If Smith only got mental images, though, then it’s hard to see why the plates ever even needed to have been made in the first place. Their actual text remains lost, and only a visual impression of their meaning has been preserved. God could just as well have shown Smith a vision of what actually happened in Nephite history, and cut out the Nephite scribe middlemen.

Secondly, this version of a Mormon account of the “coming forth” of the Book of Mormon is now indistinguishable from a theory that Smith made it all up, except for the claim that the ideas that sprang up in Smith’s mind came from God, rather than from his own deliberately fraudulent invention. In particular all the linguistic details that Mormon apologists have long touted—all the chiasmus, all the Hebraisms, all the archaic grammar—are now accepted as the products of Smith’s own deliberate efforts to imitate the Bible he knew.

This is now an unassailable theory: Smith made up a story from ideas in his own imagination, and tried to make it sound Biblical, just as skeptics have always assumed. The only point that these Mormons defend is the claim that those ideas were from God, not from fraud.

Plus, I guess, they’re still saying there were actual plates, even though they were irrelevant and all their wording was lost and they were taken away to Heaven anyway so, um, hmm.

[malkie]

I do not understand calling the Isaiah material plagiarism, it is clear about its source. This proposal from Mr Gardner fits with the decision to rely on KJ for ease

I am struck however by the thought that this proposal brings unto question the idea that word prints show Joseph not the author due to changing voice. As best I understand word print studies presume a close word for word translation in order to detect word preferences of original author.

Although, in my active believer days, I accepted it without thinking, I believe that "close word for word translation" is a complete non-starter as an explanation of how the Book of Mormon text got from the stone-in-the-hat to the English on paper via the various scribes.

I speak a bit of Spanish & French, and a tiny bit of German, even less Latin (!). I've also had a bit of exposure to Ukrainian grammar and word order through my volunteer work.

I cannot think of any non-trivial straight factual expression in any of these languages that could be translated word-for-word and come out the other end as minimally coherent. Never mind paragraph after paragraph of a story, presumably idiomatic in both source and target language.

I'm sure that there are folks here whose language knowledge and skills are much greater than mine, so I'm open to correction.