Mark A. Riddle

Mark Alfred Riddle was an educator and translator. He was born on May 12, 1946, to Chauncey and Bertha (Allred) Riddle. He was raised in Provo and Orem, Utah. He attended Brigham Young High School and then earned both his bachelor’s in history and his Master of Public Administration degrees from Brigham Young University. His graduate and doctorate studies were in economics at the University of Utah and in instructional psychology and technology at BYU.

In 1989, the American Translators Association accredited him as a Japanese-to-English translator. His translations have appeared in such academic journals as Japanese Economic Studies, and he has delivered scholarly papers before such groups as the Association for Asian Studies and the BYU Studies Symposium.

He was an instructor of Japanese and English as a second language (ESL) at Wasatch Academy in Mount Pleasant, Utah. He also chaired the ESL department. He taught Japanese at Salt Lake Community College, Utah Valley State College (now Utah Valley University), the University of Utah, and BYU, where he also taught educational psychology. He also taught ESL in Japan for several years. He owned and operated a business that provided opportunities for Japanese students to study in the U.S. and for American students to study in Japan. He also owned a company that provided translation services.

After his retirement in 2007, he worked as an online Japanese instructor for Brigham Young University-Idaho and volunteered as a Japanese-to-English translator for the Tokyo, Japan, Public Affairs Office of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he was a member. Earlier in his life (1964 to 1967) he served as a missionary in the Northern Far Eastern Mission. Also as a young man, he worked as a journeyman electrician. He was a frequent contributor to LDS Phil.com and enjoyed farming.

He was married to Laurel Backman Riddle and the father of eleven children. He passed away on June 11, 2011.