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I just bought a softcover Book of Mormon in 39 languages. I'm really excited because it is like a Rosetta Stone for all those languages. I only bought the ones available on the website here and which happen to be complete and available in softcover (because it's the least expensive form). Some very cool languages are there, including some I've never heard of before, such as Bislama which turns out to be an awesome Melanesian Creole language with lots of vocabulary derived from English.
Some notable languages are missing, including French and Finnish, because they were only listed in hardcover today. I'm going to check back later on to see if I can complete my set in softcover. Eventually if they don't have them, I'll probably buy the hardcover versions of those languages, because they're only 50 cents more, but I'd prefer to have them all the same.
I wrote an email to ldscatalog@ldschurch.org, suggesting that they make it a single line item. I hope they do that, and that every library and school in the world will get a copy simply to have as a language reference. All kinds of great side effects happen when you set about to do what the Lord has asked. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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In an only peripherally related way, I just finished this online course about how to get control of your budget and get out of debt. It's always wise to spend less on things that don't matter so we have more to spend on things that do. This course is geared toward members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but can be useful to anyone. Just thought I would point it out for anyone who is interested. It's a great series of lessons.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I saw that! I thought maybe that's part of it. If you change your coins to Canadian, then you have more of them, presto! Plus, you can't spend that here (except it does work in vending machines), so you automatically cut your spending. Great plan!
Oh, and one of the frivolous expenses I had to admit I have recently made when going through the online course is that I just bought copies of the Book of Mormon in several dozen languages which I can not read. Still, the coolness of that has me marveling. A fitting last splurge before I get my act together and get serious about saving for retirement and husbanding my resources, neh?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I don't know if the translations of the Book of Mormon can be used like you're thinking they can be used.
At least in the Italian translation, the language used isn't exactly modern Italian.
I mention this to note that when I did my daily language study as a missionary in Italy, I didn't include my reading of the Italian BoM as a part of it. The language and grammar of the BoM are not conducive to modern conversations, any more than they are in English.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Heh, I have a cousin who's fluent in English, French, and Russian. So in his boredom, he decided to study the Book of Mormon in all three languages at once. What he found was that there were some small differences in the translations that confused him. So he wrote up the church and asked them why this was, citing the eighth article of faith saying that the 'translated correctly' clause should apply to the Book of Mormon as well.
Mind you, the differences weren't in the actual stories, I mean, they didn't say Nephi had a sister named Hillary. It was just how the story was presented. Ultimately the church finally wrote him back and told him to stop nit-picking. That all the versions are relatively the same, they just will present things a little differently to make it more understandable outside of the English translation.
What's my point for bringing this up? While they should all have the same content, I'm not sure if using the different translations of the Book of Mormon as a Rosetta Stone can... y'know... be perfect, per se, to learn other languages. Sure can be helpful though. Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I used to live next door to the guy who supervises translation of the Book of Mormon. He talked about translations of the Bible one time and told us that when people translate the Bible, they are trying to make it accessible to more people so we shouldn't generally be trying to bust them down for that.
I was just going to ask, T, what you do about languages where you can't read the font. Well, it's still cool.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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There has been ALOT of talk about revising the Mandarin version of the Book of Mormon so that its written in a manner that modern readers would understand. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to explain to a semi educated person what a passage written in a dead language, translated into archaic English, translated into dated Chinese means, especially with Chinese being my second language.
quote:I mention this to note that when I did my daily language study as a missionary in Italy, I didn't include my reading of the Italian BoM as a part of it. The language and grammar of the BoM are not conducive to modern conversations, any more than they are in English
In my mission we were not even allowed to read the Book of Mormon until the discussions and first two word lists had been mastered and passed.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I'm reading the Book of Mormon in French right now, and I've never noticed anything significantly different from the English. I mean, the syntax is different, of course, and the vocabulary doesn't always match up exactly, but I haven't seen anything that seemed problematic.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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My wife's first language is Albanian, but when she was studying the Book of Mormon, she'd always study it in English. My Albanian isn't good enough to be able to tell, but she says that the translation is often word-for-word, and it comes out so sloppy that most of the time you can't tell what they're trying to say unless you read the English version first. It's sort of the Albanian equivalent of Engrish.
I'm sure that languages popular enough to have review committees and proofreaders would fare somewhat better, but the person that did the Albanian version apparently didn't understand the concept of proper translation, and no one involved in publishing knew enough to correct it, so it went out as is. Some other versions may have similar problems.
Just a word of caution. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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Speed, there's always a risk of that with any translation project. Here are the languages I bought.
Afrikaans Bislama Cambodian Cebuano Chinese English (I already had one, of course, but I wanted a pristine copy to go with my set.) Fante Haitian Hiligaynon Hindi Hmong Igbo Ilokano Indonesian Japanese Kekchi Kiribati Korean Lingala Malagasy Marshallese Mongolian Neomelanesian Portuguese Rarotongan Spanish Swahili Tagalog Tahitan Tamil Telugu Thai Tongan Tswana Twi Vietnamese Xhosa Yapese (circus language?) Zulu
Some of these I have no clue what they are.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I can't tell you how relieved I am that this is not about those annoying little stands in the airports that talk loudly while I try to nap while waiting for the plane.
Posts: 872 | Registered: Mar 2002
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It's odd how many are only hardcover, it seems like all the former Soviet languages are only hardcover, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukranian, Armenian, etc. Thoguh I didn't get to check the whole list.
Posts: 2332 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Um, anybody have a lead on a good Zulu language course? Ron bought one, but I wondered if there were others. I'm having trouble with the clicking noise.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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