According to www.ldscatalog.com, the Book of Mormon was recently translated in full in Guarani. Until now only selections of the Book of Mormon were translated into Guarani, which is an official language in Paraguay along with Spanish. Estimates of the number of Guarani speakers are put at around seven million.
The Church has grown rapidly in Paraguay for the past several years with membership climbing from 47,850 at the end of 2000 to 74,802 at the end of 2008. Congregations increased by 26 during this time period and for the past couple years we have seen very few new congregations created in Paraguay. Hopefully this indicates that many new congregations will be created in the coming year or two, especially considering that the most rapid growth in membership occurred very recently in 2006 and 2007.
The news of the full translation is indeed good news. The question I have is whether the translation was done by scholars familiar with formal texts, linguistics and the art of translation, or by inexperienced, well-meaning but ultimately incompetent hacks who the LDS Translation Department has long hoped would be rewarded for their willingness to accept the job with divine abilities (so far it only happened once--Joseph Smith). You'll forgive my brusqueness, but the topic is of great importance to me, and I might consider reading the Book of Mormon in Guarani in order to learn Guarani if the answer leads me to believe the translation is the work of bonafide skill and not ignorance, as up until very recent history was the modus operandi of LDS Translation Services (wretched translations in Spanish, Russian, Mongolian, etc.).
ReplyDeleteI do not know who was involved in the translation. You'd have to contact the Church or ask members who speak Guarani and Spanish/English to get a good answer.
ReplyDeleteI would love to read the Book of Mormon in Guarani. I speak/ read and write both in Spanish and Guarani. It'll be interesting to see how well it was translated.
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