Instruments of Translation are interpreters used by an authorized seer to translate ancient records. Ammon said a man had means by which “he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date,” and that this ability “is a gift from God.” He added that “the things are called interpreters” (Mosiah 8:13).
No one could look in them without being commanded, lest he should look for what he ought not and perish. A person “commanded to look in them” was called a seer (Mosiah 8:13). A seer is also “a revelator and a prophet,” and can know things past and things to come (Mosiah 8:16).
Objects used for interpreting languages were “prepared from the beginning” and handed down from generation to generation (Mosiah 28:14). Alma was told that “these interpreters were prepared” to fulfill God’s word (Alma 37:24). The brother of Jared also received two stones that would “magnify to the eyes of men these things” he would write (Ether 3:23-24).