Featured In Memory of "Uncle Miya"

I want to add here a peculiarity of Uncle Miya's approach. Sumo wrestling is the most popular sport in Japan, with baseball being second. At the beginning of each translation session, Uncle Miya would say, "Sa, tachiai!" This means, "Okay, stand and meet!" It is what the beginning of a Sumo match looks like. The two wrestlers touch both fists to the dirt of the dohyo ring, stand up and charge each other.

The first time Uncle Miya said this, I thought, "Good grief, what's going to happen now?" But it was just his Japanese way of saying "Let's get started." True, we occasionally butted heads over words or grammar, but that was not his intention. He simply loved the give and take of translation just like he loved Sumo wrestling!

 

There is a resemblance in the personalities.

 

Hi again, everyone. I'm finally able to get back to this thread.

Another thing I learned early from Uncle Miya is that the Japanese gender system, with its pronouns, is quite different from that of Greek or English. They don't like to use pronouns very often, and often substitute the name of the person in question when we would use a pronoun. For example, in John 1:37 he insisted that the word "him" be replaced with "Jesus," since a typical Japanese reader would be confused by "him." Sometimes he would insist on the proper name when to me the context showed clearly who was meant.

Another wrinkle to that is that the Japanese pronouns can have relationship overtones. For example, the word "she" (彼女, kanojo) can also mean "girlfriend"! So a young man might say to another, "Do you have a 'she'?" meaning "Do you have a girlfriend?"

Along the way, he also taught me some slang, especially when that slang impacted the meaning of our translation. For example, "son" has a hidden meaning if the context is not clear. When he let the cat out of the bag on that one I was blown away. They didn't teach this stuff at my alma mater, the Tokyo School of the Japanese Language!

So, we had to look for an alternate word for "son." And Uncle MIya had one ready.

 

I just have a minute--it's been a very busy day. So I'll just add a short note.

Uncle Miya always ended our translation sessions with, "Let's call it a day." He certainly did love English idioms! I think he passed that love on to me. I delight in asking my Greek class or Bible Translation class for idioms. I get some great answers, too, but the all time favorite is, "Raining cats and dogs!"

 

It was rare to get a "Well done" from Uncle Miya. He was very picky about what Japanese grammar and vocabulary to use--a strong taskmaster. I learned that early on, and it humbled me. In John 1, he had changes for every single verse up through v. 48! Sometimes he did a complete rewrite.

In v. 41 he changed the word I used for "find." I was blown away. For all those years in Japan and all the Japanese I had spoken and heard and read, I never saw the nuance. The word I had used (mitsukeru, 見付ける) was the usual word for "find," but it carried the nuance when speaking of a person, "seek and find among a crowd" (his words). So, we made the change to a word I always though simply meant "to meet" (au, 会う). So then, what we had was "He first met his brother Simon...." But remember, there is rarely one to one correspondence for words in two different languages, so while this may seem strange to our ears, it was exactly right for expressing the original in Japanese.

Finally, later on in John 1 he wrote in his notes, "48, 49, 50 perfect." I was thrilled! Those years and thousands of hours of Japanese language study were not completely wasted after all! I got three whole verses out of 51 completely right!

 

As I think I've said already, Uncle Miya was very innovative. In a language where there are several Bible translations already, there is a tendency for the later ones to follow the first one or two in key areas. You can see this in the huge influence the KJV has had on following translations.

In every single Japanese translation up till now, the word for "Son" in "Son of God" has been the same: Miko (御子). Let me parse this for you. The "mi" is an honorific prefix. The ko is simply a generic word for "child," male or female. Thus, it might be translated as "honorable child." So, why not use the typical Japanese word for "son"? Uncle Miya taught me that there is a usage of that which is taboo word, which explains why Miko is the norm.

The innovation Uncle Miya came up with is Goshisoku (御子息), a different honorific prefix, then the Chinese characters for "son" reversed and pronounced differently. This is a polite term used for "your son" when you are talking to someone who is worthy of respect. Well, from our viewpoint it works well! And I don't think it will sound poorly on the readers' or listeners' ears.

Thank you Uncle Miya for not only thinking outside the box, but inventing new boxes to think outside of!

 

Uncle Miya's questions often forced me to think more deeply about the Word. Sometimes my understanding was limited and I didn't even realize it. For example, on John 3:1 he asked, "There were more than one ruler. What was a ruler?" This is a great question! As I have learned, the Greek here does not mean that there was only one ruler, a Jew who ruled the whole province under Rome. That would have been Herod. This word is referring to a different office entirely.

Want to take a shot at it? How would you translate?

 

I have to say that Uncle Miya was a little bit of a curmudgeon. He could be a little bad tempered at times. Once in a while we would disagree completely on a rendering. In such cases he would insist on his way as the only possible translation. For my part, I would outwardly give in, but then put my own rendering in parentheses, and likely change the translation to my view later unless reflection made me agree with him. It must be said, though, that these times did not occur very often. I would only question his Japanese when I thought it conveyed the Greek meaning poorly.

One day, though, I incurred his wrath when I put my rendering in parenthesis after his. "What are you doing? My way is right," he proclaimed loudly. (His hearing was not that great, so he spoke loudly.) There was nothing to do but delete my rendering from the file altogether, and try to remember the particular issue. If I had insisted on my way, it would have deeply offended him by causing him to lose face, since he was the senior. Never, ever cause a Japanese to lose face!

 

I have always appreciated that Uncle Miya was a very giving person, in spite of having no more than a high school teacher's pension, which isn't much either in the US or Japan.

He loved woodworking, and often made and gave items. At one point he made a drawer for rice for the kitchen of our sister church. It even had a hidden compartment in it.

To me, he once gave a hanten made by his wife. The Japanese hanten (はんてん) is a wonderful indoor jacket, usually made of warm material like wool. It fastens very simply, with a single tie in the front. Japanese houses in the past were traditionally very drafty, so these indoor jackets are very popular.

His final gift to me when we left Japan was a huge four volume kanji (漢字; hanzi in Chinese) dictionary. The term kanji refers to the thousands of Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. Until this gift I had used a couple of different one volume dictionaries, but this has to be the definitive work on the Japanese usage of Chinese characters. I have used it a number of times in my work, and never been disappointed. And I always remember my dear friend and co-translator Uncle Miya when I see it or use it.

 

I can see Uncle Miya doing that!

 

Losing face in Japan happens in relationships, regardless of how many people are involved. So one can lose face even if only the two of you are there.

What I had done was put my rendering in parentheses, making his the preferred one. This is something I had done before without bothering him. Apparently that time he felt deeply about his rendering, so took offense that I did not accept it unconditionally. What would have lost face for him, as the elder of the two of us, is if I had insisted on my rendering staying in, and thus precipitating an argument.

 

Exactly right.

 

One day Uncle Miya brought me a very interesting translation project. The son of an Australian missionary to China had written his father's biography and wanted it translated into Japanese. I'm not sure it would have ever sold in Japan, but nevertheless Uncle Miya took on the project and wanted me to compare his Japanese version with the English original, which I was glad to do.

The father had been taken prisoner in the 1940's by Chinese communist soldiers, who were really nothing more than brigands. Their modus operandi was to capture a foreigner and wait for a ransom from the person's homeland. In this case the thugs were out of luck, since mission boards do not normally have a lot of money. Therefore, the communists had noting better to do than keep the missionaries prisoner, hoping against hope that someone would dig up some ransom money. It was a fascinating story. Well, the missionaries were eventually released, so the story ended well.

Uncle Miya translated several chapters and did a good job. However, when he sent those chapters to the Australian, the man asked other Japanese to read and evaluate them. Now this is something you must never do after you have engaged someone to do your translation. Furthermore, this was just the first draft, which always has errors. At any rate, the Australian "fired" Uncle Miya, saying that other Japanese had told him the work was terrible. (He was doing wthe work for free.) It was not, it was a good job, actually. What was the motive for the critics? It could have been jealousy, it could have been a desire to do the job instead of Uncle Miya, I don't know. Uncle Miya was devastated. This was a huge insult and loss of face, and so unneeded!

Here is the takeaway. Languages are very complex, and few are qualified to do translation. You must know both the original and the target language not just well, but very well. This is why I have little patience for "wannabes" here on the BB. If you don't know Greek or Hebrew or even Aramaic, don't come on here pretending to be an expert. Or, if you don't know those languages, and don't even know any other foreign language, meaning you don't have any experience whatsoever in translating, don't come on here like a know-it-all and expect respect from me or any other genuine linguist or translator.

And above all, don't write a book telling people how to translate the Bible if you have no qualifications, like H. D. Williams did with his book, Word-For-Word Translating of The Received Texts. I stand by my one star Amazon review of it, even though Williams and the other KJVO types were so offended the personal attack against me is still on the DBS website.

 

Just one more post needed here, I think.

We finished the final draft of our NT some time ago, and Uncle Miya heard about that, I believe. What he probably never knew is that over 70,000 copies of our John and Romans pamphlet have now been passed out in Japan. Also, two ministries are planning to use Scripture portions of the translation to pass out in Japan during the Tokyo Olympics--which has sadly been postponed until next year because of the corona virus.

Finally, the proofreading of the entire NT has now been completed (unless someone finds a file somewhere that I don't know about), and we are planning the printing of the NT to be this summer. God is good, and I'm sure Uncle Miya is rejoicing in Heaven.