Greatest Translator in History?

Who do you think the greatest Bible translator in history was? My nominee is William Carey (1761-1834), who translated the Bible or parts of it into about 44 languages and dialects (Elgin Moyer, Who Was Who in Church History, 2nd ed., p. 74). His Bengali translation is still in print after all of these years. I was shown a copy when I was in Bangladesh some years ago.

Furthermore, Carey trained other translators. Nathan Brown worked with him for awhile, then had to return to the States. However, in his '60's, Brown went to Japan and translated the very first Japanese NT.

 

Wow, across many miles!

 

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Of the translators into Japanese, my favorite is Nathan Brown, who translated the very first Japanese NT. He worked with Carey as a young man, then went back to the US because of his poor health. Then when he reached his 60s he went to Japan as a missionary, and learned that incredibly difficult language.

Edited in: Strange. That Wikipedia article did not even mention Nathan Brown, but he was a key figure in Bible translation in Japan.

 

No, that's a different "Brown." Samuel Brown was Reformed, but Nathan Brown was a Baptist. They both helped on the Motoyaku ("Original Translation," the first complete Bible in Japanese; also called the Meijiyaku), but Nathan left that effort because they would not translate baptizo (baptize) as "immerse." Nathan Brown then did his own translation of the NT, which was the first complete NT translation in Japanese. (Gutzlaff, Bettelheim, and fellow Baptist Goble had each done individual books).

I have a facsimile of Nathan Brown's NT. The complete title is: The New Testament in Vernacular Japanese from the Oldest Existing Greek Manuscripts, With Interlinear Notices of Various Readings. So even before Westcott and Hort, Brown's textual criticism veered towards a critical text. So, there is no "Japanese KJV."

 

Yep, that's the one.

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