I Translate Him For Everybody

He says something at the table and there is a small drop in the room.

And you are already moving. You say, what he means is, and then you produce a version of the sentence with the edge filed off, and the room comes back up, and the meal continues, and nobody thanks you because nobody noticed anything happened.

You have been doing this for so long that you do it inside a second. You hear the raw sentence and the softened one at almost the same time.

And you have never once asked yourself the obvious question, which is: who hired you.

If what he says is not roughness but harm, if he demeans somebody or frightens anybody at that table, then softening it is doing damage rather than preventing it, and this article is not the first thing you need. Getting somebody qualified involved where you live comes before all of it.

What the translation costs him

Let me start with the person nobody thinks about in this arrangement, which is him.

He says a thing. The family does not hear it. They hear your improved edition, which is warmer and more reasonable and which he did not write. So over about fifteen years, the family has formed a picture of a man who does not exist, and he has never once been met.

He is being protected from consequences, which sounds kind. He is also being prevented from being known.

You have been standing between a man and every relationship in his family, and no act of kindness has ever once been able to do that without a cost to him. Proverbs 26:17 says a man who meddles with strife not his own takes a dog by the ears, which is the written word describing exactly this position, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can get a person out of the middle without anybody being abandoned.

And here is the harder half. He may be right about some of the things he says. That is the part your translation removes most reliably, because an edge is often where the truth is.

You have been filing off content along with the tone, for years, and nobody in that family has ever had to reckon with what he actually thinks.

You are able to let a hard sentence reach the room intact, and letting somebody speak for himself has never once been the same as taking his side. The Spirit of God is what makes a person able to hold still, and it is written in Proverbs 26 that grabbing hold of a quarrel that belongs to somebody else is like taking a dog by the ears.

Taking a dog by the ears

He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears. (Proverbs 26:17, King James Version)

That is one of the most physical images in the whole book and it is worth picturing properly.

A man walking past sees a fight that has nothing to do with him and grabs hold. And the picture Solomon reaches for is a man holding a dog by both ears: he did not have to take hold, nobody asked him to, and now he cannot let go, because letting go is worse than holding on.

That is the position exactly. You did not have to start translating. Nobody asked. And now, fifteen years in, stopping feels more dangerous than continuing.

You have been holding on because letting go looks worse, and that has never once meant the holding was doing anybody good. It is written in Proverbs 26:17 that a man who takes up strife not his own has a dog by the ears, which is the written word naming the trap and not the man, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an opening of the hands survivable.

And notice the phrase belonging not to him. Solomon is not saying peace is bad or that trouble should be ignored. He is drawing a line around ownership.

The strife between your uncle and the rest of that table belongs to them. Every one of them is an adult. It was never assigned to you and you picked it up on a Thursday about fifteen years ago because somebody had to and nobody else moved.

You are carrying something that was never yours, and picking a thing up quickly has never once made it your property. The Spirit of God is the one who returns a burden to its actual owner, and Proverbs 26 puts the whole warning on strife that belongs to somebody else.

What happens if you stop

Now the fear, which is specific and which I am not going to talk you out of.

If you stop translating, there will be an evening that goes badly. Somebody will hear the raw sentence and react to it, and there will be a silence at that table, and a phone call afterward, and you will be the only person in the room who knows it could have been prevented.

That is real, and you should expect it.

You are permitted to let one evening go the way it was always going to go, and one bad silence at a table has never once been a disaster somebody caused. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a person through a room they are not managing, and it is written that meddling with strife not his own is like taking a dog by the ears.

But consider what is on the other side of it, because it is not just relief for you.

The family gets to meet him. Actually meet him, in his own words, with his own edges. Some of them will like him less. One or two of them may finally understand something about him that fifteen years of your careful editions have hidden.

And he gets to find out how he lands, which he has never once been allowed to find out, because you have been catching it every time.

You are able to hand a man back his own words, and letting somebody be heard accurately has never once been unkindness. The Spirit of God is what does the work in a room nobody is steering, and Proverbs 26:17 leaves the strife with the ones it belongs to.