Herman Aschmann was a kindly man without pretense. His work was
always more of the heart than of the head. He was plainspoken, a
bit nervous, tolerant of others and always the best kind of
company. Felipe Ramos, Totonac pastor and radio voice of the
Totonac Cultural Hour
There is a tendency to accept academic training as a criterion of
expertness in translating, since people think of translators as
language professionals and professionalism is usually judged in
terms of years of study. On the other hand, one of the most
creative translators I have ever known was Herman Aschmann, a
person of limited academic training, but one who became entranced
by the cultural content and literary potential of Totonac, an
Indian language of Mexico. Instead of submitting one possible
rendering of a biblical expression, he usually had a half dozen
different ways of representing the meaning of the Greek text. Not
only did he produce three exceptional New Testaments in Totonac,
but he inspired local people to imitate his skill in discovering
more and more meaningful ways of communicating a message into an
entirely different language-culture. Dr. Eugene Nida, premier
linguist, Bible Translation theoretician, and Herman's former
linguistics teacher
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