Fascinated by Languages (review)

‘Nida, Eugene Albert; Linguist.’ Thus read the reservation form at the Moscow hotel, and the staff wondered where his companion was—Albert Linquist. A few days later, there was no reservation in St. Petersburg for Eugene Nida, but there in the register was Albert Linquist, so he gladly assumed that identity for the moment (58–59). This is a typically self-effacing anecdote from the kaleidoscope that makes up the first part (‘In more than ninety countries’, 9–65) of this memoir. As in W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s 1066 and all that, there are Two Dates and many Good Things, but almost no Bad Things. The dates: B.A., UCLA, Classics, 1936—an M.A., USC, Patristics, followed—and in 1943, he was working for the American Bible Society. That he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in English linguistics in 1943 can only be gleaned from his contribution to First person singular 2 (ed. by Konrad Koerner, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991, 227–38). N recounts his tales in an order determined only by geography, with no indication of which event followed which; but all his stories illuminate his passion for translating the Bible, particularly the New Testament. Part 2, ‘Bible translation, texts and interpretations’ (67–132), is a light survey of the sort of problems that can be encountered in translating, still anecdotal (with a few more dates). N makes clear (passim) that a translation must hew close to the original—sheep and goats (Matthew 25: 32) must not be changed to goats and sheep for a readership that values goats and despises sheep; the text must be presented as is, with explanatory notes (17). A brief Part 3, ‘A personal touch’ (133–43), is hardly more personal than the rest of the book, though it includes tributes to both Althea, his late wife of just short of fifty years, and Elena, whom he subsequently wed after they met at a conference of translators (136–37).

This book reveals very little of Eugene Nida. He does not tell us where he was born, whether there were any siblings, or what his parents were like. Only from the Library of Congress CIP card do we learn that the book was published in his ninetieth year. Only from the Bulletin of the Linguistic Society of America do we learn that he was its president in 1968. He does not reveal whether he likes music, movies, or skiing. Most importantly, he never reveals what brought him to Bible translation and the American Bible Society in the first place. Was it a natural outcome of his work with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, to which ‘a friend’ introduced him upon his college graduation (2)? Surely it cannot have been the two Methodist preachers who successively proved from Revelation 13 that Mussolini was, and was not, the Anti-Christ—a confusion his father helped the small boy understand by saying, ‘In life it is even more important to be able to doubt than to believe, because too many people love the unbelievable’ (1). N seems to have had no doubts. Though he himself has never translated one chapter of the Bible for publication (135), like his contemporary, teacher, and friend Kenneth L. Pike, he has dedicated his life to its dissemination among peoples throughout the world. But unlike Pike, who at the close of a week-long meeting gladly spent a quarter hour with a very junior, rather impertinent colleague explaining what made him a missionary, N does not tell us why.