who translates the tech?

[James McGuigan]

I do that, yeah. I have a Larousse little encyclopedia I use for French, but often I find google image and text to also help give a good sense of the overall texture or a word or expression. I do notice new ones everywhere, too.

Even if you are a native speaker in both languages, though, translation is always a kind of interpretation. Hubbard's writing is very 1950's and rich in idiom--and given the "In the beginning was the tech/And the tech was with Hubbard/and the tech WAS Hubbard" mentality, I wonder how they justify away translation.

A few religions have similar issues; Islam tends to insist that ideally the Koran should not be translated but read in Arabic. Of course people do anyway...

[James McGuigan]

This story is a first hand report of an SO member who was part of the LRH translations team and talks about some of the SNAFUs of the project.

http://www.freezone.org/reports/theo_01.htm

James, that is a very interesting report. The writer, Theo Sismanides, used to post here in the Pro Scientology forum. He is a very strong believer in standard LRH tech. He believes that a large portion of the problems in the CoS, including not getting LRH materials translated efficiently, are a result of "hidden data lines" and "verbal tech" from those "just following orders" originating with the COB.