SUGG E ST IO NS.
§ 1.-THE
SPIRITUAL AND INTELLECTUAL REQUIREMENTS OF A TRANSLATOR.
IT is no easy matter to translate out of one language into another, especially if neither of them is our mother tongue. The difficulty is enhanced when the subject matter to be translated is abstruse, or in some respects removed from the sphere of everyday life. The responsibility becomes enormous when the translator is engaged not on the word of man, but on the inspired records of God's truth. Who can sit down to such a task without being overwhelmed with the sense of its gravity, whilst encouraged by a consciousness of its importance? The difficulties are manifold : the antiquity and peculiarity of the original languages, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Hellenistic or J udreo-Greek; the brevity of the idiom ; the uncertainty of the meaning of mat1y words ; the necessity of translating some things definitely which are left indefinite in the original ; the difficulty of getting rid of early prepossessions connected with our own English version and with the school of religious thought in which we were broµ.ght up ; the consciousness that by our work, whether it be good or bad, the religious ideas of hundreds, thousands, or perhaps of many generations, may be formed. Truly, as one meditates on these things, one mav well tremble at the task. ' He ·hath need to live a clean life: says Purvey, in his Prologue to Wickliffe's Bible, 'and be full devout in prayers, and have not his wit occupied about worldly things, that the Holy Spirit, Author of wisdom, knowledge, and truth, dress him in his work and suffer l1im not to err. . . . By this manner, with good living and great travail, men may ccme to true and clear translating, and true
