The first Christian ministers arrived in Hawaii in 1820. With the help of Hawaiians explaining the nuances of their language, eight ministers worked for 15 years to translate the Bible. They weren't just doing a new version of the King James Bible, the prevailing translation of their day. The missionaries translated from the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek used in early New Testament text.

Their scholarship stands, said [project manager Jack] Keppeler. "We're not translating it again, we are just re-spelling it."
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"The myth that the missionaries botched the language has proven not to be true," Keppeler said.