The lost 116 pages, never retranslated
ContestedLDS scholars have a real answer here. Say so before your friend does.
What happened
In 1828 Martin Harris borrowed the first 116 pages of the translation and lost them. They were never recovered.
What happened next
They were not retranslated. A revelation, now D&C 10, said wicked men had altered the lost pages and would publish the altered version to discredit him.
So he was told to translate a different set of plates covering the same period instead.
Their answer, at full strength
That this is guarding against forgery, not dodging. Dictated translation never comes out word for word the same twice.
If enemies held the only other copy, any difference would be paraded as proof he made it up.
How strong is this argument?
Arguable. The forgery worry is reasonable.
What is worth noticing is that a replacement text already existed, covering the same years. And no altered version was ever published.
What to say
"Did the altered pages ever actually appear?"
How they answer this — at its strongest
Doing it again would never match word for word, and enemies held the only copy.
Three replies. First, the stated reason is guarding against forgery, not dodging. If enemies held the only other copy, a fresh translation differing in any wording, as dictated translation always would, could be paraded as proof of fraud. Declining the trap is the rational move.
Second, the convenient-replacement framing ignores the text. The small plates are foreshadowed inside it, at 1 Nephi 9 and 19, as a second record made by Nephi. Mormon's plain 'I know not' why he included them reads like an old editor noting a prompting he did not understand. That is a strange thing for a forger to invent.
Third, believers read this as God providing ahead of a failure he foresaw. The episode is also the origin of a lasting lesson about Joseph's fallibility, in D&C 3.
The verdict
The forgery worry is fair, but no altered pages were ever published.
This turns entirely on what you think likely to begin with. Both sides agree on every fact. Their reading hangs together, and the point about wording is genuinely right about how translation works.
The ordinary reading is still the simpler one, and it has one specific edge. The seer-stone method as the church now describes it has fixed English words appearing on the stone. That is a tight-control model, and under it a second try should have matched. So the wording objection loses its force.
Their defence and the church's own translation essay sit in mild tension. Nothing here can be settled either way.
Sources
- Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Signature Books, 2004); Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History (1945)
- Doctrine and Covenants 10 (primary revelation text)
- LDS Discussions, 'The Lost 116 Pages'