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A few years ago, I felt a desire to learn Hawaiian. As those of you who speak Hawaiian to any degree know, the language is as beautiful as the islands themselves and the people who live there. I found a number of materials to help learn Hawaiian, and my background as a speaker of Tahitian was also helpful.
During that process, I decided that since I had a copy of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian, I would read it to help my study. Unfortunately, in trying to compare the Hawaiian with either the English or the Tahitian text, I soon found that the Hawaiian Book of Mormon had been translated long enough ago that it had the old chapter and paragraph divisions of the 1830 English edition. So I started to mark the verses according to the current divisions as I read. This approach was rather cumbersome, and led to a very messy copy of the Hawaiian text.
So I decided to enter the text into my PC as I studied in the time available to me for this activity. The result, over two years later, was an electronic copy of Ka Buke a Moramona, the Hawaiian Book of Mormon. Along with that was a list of approximately 2,200 issues that needed to be examined.
All of this leads us to the current situation. The 1999 reprint (also the new 2007 reprint) of the 1855 edition of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian suffers from faint areas that are difficult to read, as well as other visual problems that could be rectified by reprinting it using modern electronic storage and typesetting techniques and new printing technologies. There are other issues, too, which need to be addressed.
I am pleased with what I’ve been able to accomplish thus far, but the time has come to invite others to get involved in this project. As I mentioned earlier, in the course of entering the text, I identified approximately 2,200 issues that need to be examined. These issues include omitted words, phrases, and sentences, as well as a number of typographical errors. I found English text which simply did not exist in the printed editions of the day, such as the book heading for the Book of Ether (added for the 1879 edition prepared under the direction of Orson Pratt?). Questions also arose about word choice, pronoun ambiguity (dual vs plural, exclusive mākou vs inclusive kākou, etc.), and other word errors. Exploring these issues further could be a great help to students of Ka Buke a Moramona.
The electronic text of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian has now been organized into the current divisions of chapter and verse. In light of that, it seems that some important things we can accomplish in the near future fall into three main areas:
a) Correct obvious errors and omissions in the 1855 translation. George Q. Cannon, Jonathan Napela, and all the others who were involved in the original translation of the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian performed a heroic labor. This project does not seek to take away from their accomplishments. Quite the contrary, any improvements that come from our current efforts will come in large part because we stand on the shoulders of giants. With that as an underlying philosophy, we hope to add in some small measure to the tremendous work which they accomplished. And we hope to use modern technology to make their labor available in ways which could only be dreamed of or seen in vision in 1855.
b) Openly discuss other translation issues that are not easily classified as obvious errors in translation, and make those discussions available to all interested students of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian. For example, how should we deal with terms that have changed meaning significantly since the first half of the nineteenth century? Further, given the semantic mapping of pronouns and kinship terms in Hawaiian and other Eastern Polynesian languages, should certain passages be reexamined in light of how they have been translated into Maori, Rarotongan, and Tahitian? Should the Hawaiian text be brought into conformity with the 1981 English edition of the Book of Mormon?
c)Create a forum to discuss what products might come from this project. By products, I don’t mean commercial offerings. That is, I don’t mean, "So what can we sell when we’re done." What I mean is, "What will we have to show for our efforts." With that in mind, here are several possible products.
1) An annotated electronic student’s text of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian, including various translation issues and indications of changes made to the 1855 Hawaiian edition.
2) An annotated printed student’s text of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian, including various translation issues and indications of changes made to the 1855 Hawaiian edition.
3) Updated punctuation.
4) Updated orthography.
5) A searchable electronic text of the Book of Mormon in Hawaiian.
6) A searchable electronic database of translation issues, including errors and corrections.
Thank you for asking. Four immediate needs stand out at this point in the project.
First, the project needs people to proofread the new text against the 1855 edition and the issues database. I have undoubtedly perpetuated some old errors from the 1855 printing. And in spite of my best efforts, I have just as undoubtedly introduced new errors of my own. Proofreading is a thankless but critical task and is especially important where the scriptures are concerned. Mistakes creep into even the published editions of the scriptures (For example, Moses 6:19 is simply missing from the 1962 edition of the French Pearl of Great Price, and Moroni 10:3 of the 1992 printing of Selections from the Book of Mormon in Niuean contains the typo maantu [not a word] for manatu [remember].). This is definitely one area where the more eyes we can put on the task, the better.
Second, the project needs people to help look at the issues identified in the database, discuss those issues, and where possible and appropriate, propose resolutions for them.
A third need concerns the issues database itself. This is a database in the general sense of the word only, but not in the commonly implemented computer sense. When I started entering text, I created a Q&D (quick and dirty) "database" in an OpenOffice calc spreadsheet because I was the only one using it. Of course, I kept meaning to go back and formalized the thing, but you know the rest of that story. Now when all the computer geeks finish laughing, perhaps we can get back on point. A web accessible PHP/MySQL database or something similar would greatly increase the usability of the current information. It would also allow for updates on current issues and for new information to be entered and used much more easily. I have done this sort of thing in ColdFusion before, but I surely wouldn't mind some help.
The fourth need is to help clean up this website. Oh, I like the basic look well enough, I guess, but the CSS underlying it is convoluted, needlessly complex, and highly uncool.
Talk about cutting straight to the chase! The new text is on my hard drive; the original, marked up copy of the 1855 edition is in my library; and the spreadsheet "database" is on my hard drive.
That’s not entirely accurate.
The contents of Ka Buke a Moramona have been divided into a number of smaller units for more manageable uploading, downloading, and editing. Each unit is available on the project text page in three formats: HTML, OpenOffice Writer (ODT), and PDF.
As for the original text in its reprinted format, it is available from the LDS Distribution Center at http://www.ldscatalog.com/.
Ah, now we come to the infamous spreadsheet database. It is available in its original OpenOffice Calc format, as well as in Excel format.
Four reasons, really. First, OpenOffice is a comprehensive office suite; thus, it is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office. Second, OpenOffice is available from OpenOffice.org for free, gratis, no charge. For no money, you get a legal copy of the software. Third, OpenOffice is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. So people in far-flung areas on diverse hardware and operating systems can easily exchange files with one another. Fourth, the word processing and spreadsheet files it has produced for this project are 3 to 4 times smaller than either Microsoft Office files or PDF files. That means much quicker download times and lower bandwidth costs.
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is this: When I used a website creation program to get the site up and running quickly, I should have known that the "CSS-oriented" HTML that it would produce would, in the long run, create more problems than it solved. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch, is there? But it will take some time to improve things.
Thank you. This is a very tight crop from a photo I took one sunrise in the spring of 1968 on the island of Maupiti, French Polynesia. And I’m rather fond of it, actually.