Surely, one must think of Joseph Smith when reading Ammon’s response to King Limhi, "I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God." To this day, scholars argue about what kind of symbols Joseph Smith translated to produce the Book of Mormon. If such scholars as Samuel Mitchill and Charles Anthon, to whom Martin Harris took copies for their examination in the winter of 1828, were unable to define exactly what the symbols were and what they said, imagine how Joseph Smith must have felt upon first seeing them! In Mormon 9:34, Moroni prophesied:
But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language; and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof.
Joseph’s ability to translate ancient records, like the case of Mosiah’s ability mentioned in this chapter (8:13), was a gift from God and only worked when God enabled the prophet and seer to do His will. The gift of "the interpretation of languages" (Moroni 10:16), like all spiritual gifts, "come[s] by the Spirit of Christ; and they come unto every man severally, according as [Christ] will" (Moroni 10:17). Like Joseph Smith and Mosiah, we all have gifts from the Lord that can only be used properly to build up the kingdom of God. On his own, with what limited education he had, Joseph Smith would have been completely unable to translate the record without divine aid. While the Prophet may have initially sought the assistance of scholars in making sense of the characters on the plates, the result of Harris’s meeting with Anthon made it clear that Joseph himself would ultimately have to be responsible for the translation. Ammon’s statement that "whosoever is commanded to look in them [the interpreters], the same is called seer" (8:13) emphasizes the need for divine assistance and authority in translating such material of ancient origin. This is exactly how the Prophet Joseph Smith claimed it was done.
Book of Mormon Central, "Why Did the Book of Mormon Come Forth as a Miracle?" KnoWhy 273 (February 10, 2017).
Book of Mormon Central, "What Do We Know About the ‘Anthon Transcript’?" KnoWhy 515 (May 9, 2019).