Translating without a Text: The Case of the Book of Mormon

Gideon Toury has usefully described the Book of Mormon (1830) as a pseudotranslation, but the identification only begs the question of why Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844) chose to present his work in this way, and why, having adopted the role of ―translator,‖ he used a strategy of overt translation. After considering the possibility of Smith‘s using talk of an ―original text‖ as a false document frame, we conclude that Smith adopted the role of translator to claim for his work the authority of an external (and therefore clear-sighted) observation of his world and settled on a strategy of foreignization because his theory of language meant that ―plainness‖ would be unachievable if one sought to express the ideas of such an original in another language. Although we might assume some general familiarity on his part with eighteenth-century translation theory, Smith‘s thinking was essentially his own.