Can A Translation Company Be Helpful In Translating A Bible Manuscript?

Translation is very important in every sector nowadays. Whether that’s a translation of medical documents, of a business document, a financial document, a legal document or a scientific research report. But wait a minute, how about the Bible? Why is it that you seldom hear from anybody about bible translation? I mean, I have never heard about any Bible translation that had been done by a translation agency. This could be very interesting. In what language was the Bible first written? Who were the first people who translated this very Holy and undying book?Primarily, the Old Testament was almost entirely written in Hebrew and some of the chapters of the prophecies of Ezra and Daniel and one verse in Jeremiah were written in a language called Aramaic. Aramaic is one of the oldest languages on earth. It has been discovered that the Aramaic language is more than 3,000 years old. The Aramaic language was used by Assyrians, Persian and Babylonian Empire. Aramaic was the most common language that was spoken in ancient Israel in Jesus’ time and it is believed by modern people that this is the same language that Jesus spoke.The first hand-written English language Bible manuscript was first translated in the 1380’s A.D by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar and theologian. During that time, only the Latin version of the bible must be read by the people and whoever was caught and known to have translated any verses of the bible from one language to another had to be be punished. Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscripts of copies of the scriptures that were all translated from Latin to English.However, the New Testament was actually originally written in Greek. You might wonder why. Well, the Greek language was commonly spoken by experts and scholars around 50 – 100 B.C or during the start of the New Testament period. And it was a fact too that during these days, not all Jews could read Hebrew anymore.At this point, since the era of Bible translation started very early. Is it still desirable or useful to hire translation companies today for this kind of matter? Would the Catholic Church allow anybody from a translation agency to translate a Bible manuscript from one language to the other? Or does the Catholic Church have its own private translators to perform this difficult task?There are thousands and thousands of Bible translations nowadays. It seems that it is likely to have a different meaning every day. This is not funny, but so true! One of the biggest problems of the Bible translators is that we don’t really have a main or original manuscript of the Bible, but only have a number of later copies, and copies of translations. We all know that Bible is the bestselling book in the history and it is the most in demand material for translation. However, over these years many languages have been used to translate this Holy Book. But some people notice that there are slight changes between the various translations of some verses. Does that mean that these verses are still believable, or not? Some people (including me) find it disturbing that  the translation keep on changing from time to time, and from one edition to the next. .My point is, could these translation companies be capable enough to translate a Bible manuscript from one language to the other? This could be serious and really hard work. And since we do not have an original manuscript of the Bible, we most often make decisions about which of these lines in the Bible is correct or which verses are from God’s mouth and which ones are ‘just’ from the human mind. Actually, there are several problems that most professional translators encounter in translating the Bible. And these could be amongst the possible reasons why we have plenty of Bible translations and sometimes strange meanings.Translation of any kind is a difficult process; however there is always the same way in order to have an effective and reliable translation. A translator must understand clearly the original meaning of the original script before translating the data into other language.The original Bible manuscript in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek is quite difficult to understand because these languages have been dead for almost 2,000 years. The Modern Greek and Hebrew languages are quite different from the ancient ones. And so, as a result it is not that easy to understand the original manuscript of the Bible. I guess this is s one of the reasons why all priests, pastors, including the translators must know how to read Greek and Hebrew, so that they can relay the right message to the people. Of course they are fortunate to learn about these languages but sad to say, there are some instances where there are some English translations of the Bible of the same passage, but sometimes with quite different meanings. This could well be the mistake of the Bible translators. I am pretty sure that we if take a look to the different versions of the Bible, most of the verses could have different meanings.In translation, you clearly have to know the source language in order to translate the same message into a different language. It is sad to know that some translators still use machine translations. Dear me! Machine translators are just machines, whose knowledge is quite limited. In fact, in some respect, they have almost no real ‘knowledge’, but rather only ‘information’ about individual words, or sometimes phrases. They then string these words and phrases together with abandon, in blissful unawareness of the comical effects created. I know that this job is really difficult for experts, scholars as well as linguists. Even they’ve undertaken a lot of research into further understanding and clarification of the original Bible manuscript,  there can still be some mistakes in translating the language.So, can translation companies be capable enough to translate Bible manuscripts? Most translation companies claim that they are reliable and competent enough to provide such services. How do we know that they can actually translate an entire book like the Bible? And Is the English world Bible still reliable?I would say that translation companies who have knowledgeable and competent translators can do the job of translating the entire Bible manuscript.  However, I really doubt if we still have the same message from the original manuscript,  but then, I guess the Bible is still reliable although there is lack of language polish.  These imperfections may confuse people. However, from my point of view, as long as it doesn’t harm people and does not require us to hurt people, then it is still okay to rely on the Holy Bible. After all, God is our witness for what we are doing, whether it’s good or bad. One of the important things on God’s commission is through the Bible and therefore it is sacred. We need just to think that through the Bible we feel closer to God, and I hope after you read this material of mine, your relationship with Him will still be the same. Continue to believe in Him. Don’t make the Bible translation an issue to question Gods authority, because that doesn’t make sense. What most important here is you accept Him as your Savior, Provider, Healer, King and God.