“President Smith has asked me to mention one thing. While President Smith was in Tonga [in 1938] we asked him to help us to get the Book of Mormon translated into the Tongan language. He has given us a lot of assistance. While he was there he said: ‘I will try and do my best to get the sanction of the Church Authorities to let you translate the Book of Mormon, Brother Dunn.’
“Of course I could have translated the Book of Mormon, and there has been a lot of credit given me for translating the Book of Mormon. I am not due all the credit that is written on the front page of the Book of Mormon in Tongan. I am not due all that credit. There is one young man to whom is due that credit. He is Brother Ermel J. Morton. I found I had so many duties that my translation was going very slowly and so in one conference I gave Brother Morton the assignment to translate the Book of Mormon. After his translations and my translations were completed, we would compare the two and put them together. Brother Morton was through so quickly that my translations did not amount to much.
“Of course I worked with Brother Morton and we corrected it and sent it to Zion and we thought that it should be printed at that time. Our translation, no doubt, was not just what it should have been so it was changed a bit and sent back to me, and then was returned again. It seemed as if there were a lot of stalling, that there were a lot of things being done that could have been avoided, but I know now it was not that. It was not the will of our Father that those things should be printed as they were, because since that time the Tongan language has taken a radical change. They have put in all of the glottal stops, they have put in ‘ng’ instead of a ‘g’ they have thrown out the ‘B’ and put all ‘p’s’ and several other things have been changed in the language. After all those changes were made, then Brother Morton copied the Book of Mormon into the proper language and today we have it. I was very happy to receive the Book of Mormon in Tongan before I left, to present to the Queen and some of the people there, and a shipment of the Book of Mormon no doubt has arrived there before now.”
– Emile C. Dunn (former President of Tongan Mission), 1946