Why SE and Language Development are Top of the Food Chain

Many of us see Bible translation as the ultimate goal of what we do in our work. That’s what we were recruited for, that’s what we trained for. Linguistics is an important means to an end, and that end is Bible translation. When we sit down and plan the next year’s activities what do we plan? Books of the Bible (New Testament?) that we want to draft or edit during the next year? A typical plan has: training for new members to the project, work for experienced translators and checking work for the exegete/advisor/coordinator assigned to the project (or Translation Consultant). But what if we were to rephrase everything in terms of impact? The impact a scripture translation has is clearly a Scripture Engagement goal. Who is the impact going to be on? The community. It depends what kind of a community we’re talking about. If there are churches then the SE goals need to be worked out with those communities. What are the primary needs? Which scripture selections are most likely to appeal to people? In what format should they be presented? And so on.

If not then the language development goals need to be worked out with the wider community. That’s where development comes in. Community relations and finding out what people want to do. Also sociolinguistic and cultural research of course.

So SE and language development drive everything else. Translation is a means to an end, once we have worked out the impact we (or rather the community in question) would like to see. Sorted!

Seeing it All Fit Together

When talking to folk in churches I sometimes get the idea that what they really like is A and we are doing B. The A is rather immaterial. It might be church-planting or development work or something like that. It is what this person, or church, sees as the important work. What is really needed. 'If I were there in such-and-such a place, I would get involved in A.' The trouble with this is:

1. We are often unaware of the real needs of the community
2. It's not really up to us to tell them what their needs are. That's rather patronising
3. That may be somebody else's specialism, not mine (as a Bible-translator type)

So what do we generally do about that? Well, we spend a lot of time listening and learning, basically. Development work usually starts with building relationships with the community and finding out what they want, so that's what we do. If the community is a village, they might have development ideas. If it is a community of believers (a church), they might have scripture engagement ideas. Once we have listened we can begin to draw up a plan, with them, about how we might meet those needs, including language development, scripture engagement and translation work. 

Some folk in churches have even got the idea that doing any kind of work overseas is counter-productive. It can be, but not if we start right and are prepared to serve and facilitate, rather than dictate and do. 

One Story at a Time

We want to make sure the Bibles and Bible portions we produce are acceptable to the audience and in an appropriate format. Often we find ourselves working with people who are not very literate, who speak two languages (their mother tongue, and a trade language), and who are used to oral means of communication. This means that it is good to produce short audio recordings or videos that will have a large impact. Once someone has become a believer they are much more likely to start devouring scripture—before that we need to think creatively of different ways of getting Bible stories into people’s hands (ears and eyes). One very popular method these days is called Oral Storying or Chronological Storying. This is where a believer tells a small group a story straight from the Bible. He or she tells it three or four times and asks some questions to see if they have understood it. The group all go home and retell the story (by now they have memorised it), and so the message is passed on. The interesting thing is that it is much better not to ask analytical questions such as, ‘What do you think the story means?’ or ‘What good example can we follow?’ The questions all need to be about characters and events in the story—oral learners drink in the meaning of the story without analysing it in the way we might. The stories start with Adam & Eve and go on through the Bible.

'Tell as a story!'

Making the Narrative Flow

When working on narrative sections of the Bible, such as bits of Genesis, the Synoptic gospels, and so on, it is often good to keep certain key terms and phrases concordant, by which I mean we translate them the same way each time. Some translators will want to vary nouns such as 'blessing' and 'faithful love', adjectives such as 'good' and 'merciful', and phrases such as 'walk with God' and 'the Word of the LORD' each time they use them, much as a poet would. Though this may be seen as good style from a literary point of view, it doesn't help the narrative hang together in the way the author or narrator originally designed it - what we call 'cohesion'. I prefer to talk about narrators rather than authors, as we cannot get in the mind of the author, but we can see from the text what the narrator was trying to achieve. In the 1980s and 1990s various writers (Alter, Berlin, Licht, Sternberg, Turner) brought out books teaching what has come to be known as the New Literary Criticism, or Narrative Approaches to the Bible. They study scenes, characters, points of view (narrator's, a character's), and key terms. Although they wrote mainly on the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible as some of them would call it, their approaches can equally be applied to narrative portions of the NT. If we keep terms concordant, we allow the reader to see links between narratives, and draw conclusions that are vital to understanding the Bible. Meaning-based translation can militate against such concordance (or consistency, if there is some kind of system), and variance may at times be necessary due to the difference in semantic range of words, but we need to keep as much consistency as possible, I would argue, and not be slap-dash or careless in our work.

Here are a couple of books to read on the subject:

Alter, Robert
The Art of Biblical Narrative
Basic Books, USA, 1981

Sternberg, Meir
The Poetics of Biblical Narrative
Indiana University Press, Bloomington IL. 1985

Adele Berlin
Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative.
Eisenbrauns; Reprint edition (1 Dec 1994)

In addition, Alter has done translations of the Pentateuch, Samuel, and Psalms. The translations themselves are not by any means meaning-based, but the footnotes are wonderfully helpful!

And to finish, here's a quote:

'Gen. 22, Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac, is an example of a brilliant narrative. ‘Narrative, whatever its medium, holds the interest of an audience by raising questions in their minds, and delaying the answers’ (David Lodge, The Art of Fiction).'
http://www.oxfordbiblicalstudies.com/article/opr/t94/e1308 accessed 16/09/2013

Why we Work in Partnership with Others

We have always worked in partnership with other organisations, not least to see Bibles printed and distributed, a role we have often left to the Bible Societies. It used to be that we were one of the main organisations working in minority languages, and considered ourselves the experts - hence the Ethnologue - an on line and print resource for those who want to find out about people groups and which language they speak: www.ethnologue.com.

In the real world ministry is sometimes messy. No I'm not talking about messy church, I'm talking about messy ministry - where people dive in and do what seems to be best, then look for help once they realise they are in over their heads. This often happens in Bible translation. A church-planting team will be working in an area like the one in the photo above, and realise they don't have a Bible for the people they are trying to reach, so they start working on one! Pretty soon they realise they need some training and consultant input, and this is the point where they often approach us. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, a large mission organisation focused on a particular country or area realises the need for a new translation into the modern spoken language. The 19th-century translation seems out of date or too literal to be of use in evangelism - it isn't well understood. So they find a believer who is qualified to translate, but again they need someone in the Bible translation world to visit and work with this translator, to advise, encourage, and help them with exegesis (working out the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek the Bible was written in). This is where we can help. We have realised it is better to work in partnership to see the goal of scriptures begun in every language that needs it by the year 2025 (Vision 2025 http://wycliffe.org.uk//wycliffe/about/vision-2025.html). If we tried to work on our own the work would take much longer, and though it might be of good quality, there is a danger it won't be well-used. Working with church planting and other mission organisations ensures that message gets out there and is read, or heard, or watched on TV, as appropriate. Working like this may be messy, but it leads to Kingdom growth. Please pray for ongoing good relationships!
 

Are We Excluding People? (A thought on partnership).

When we are working with a particular ethnic group or socio-ethnic group, how many others should we include as partners? Often we tend to include:

• Church leaders from that particular socio-ethnic group
• Mission leaders from within the country, especially those working with that group
• Representatives from Bible Translation agencies such as the Bible Societies, IBT

But what about including church leaders from the wider churches, those that speaker the language of wider communication? They often feel excluded from what we are doing, and we do tend to exclude them because they seem not to have an immediate interest in it, and don't usually speak the language. There is also the issue of religious background. If the socio-ethnic group is MBB or insider, the LWC churches are often against the kind of language used in the translation, seeing it as syncretistic, or just plain heretical. It's very difficult to know whether to include them or not. If we include them, they may well force us down a certain route (literal translation, no attempt at contextualisation or use of natural MBB language). If, however, we don't include them the translation will only be used by the MBB or insider readers/hearers and not at all by the wider church. Sometimes folk in the Bible Translation world suggest that two translations are needed - one for the church, and one for MBBs and others. This, however, is not such a good idea, as outsiders can compare the two translations, point out the differences, and 'prove' that we have corrupted the Bible. Let's remember that whatever goes into print will be 'The Bible' for some time to come, and will be taken as authoritative, inspired, and so on. We need to think more carefully about such audience issues before starting projects, and one tool to enable us to do this is the project brief. This should be written not just by the project coordinator with input from the team and consultant, but including as many partners as possible. The project will then get off to a good start, with clear 'ends' in sight. Please let's spend more time working on relationships and partnership-building at the local level. For this to happen we need good project coordinators, not necessarily with a linguistic background. Will you join us?

WEA Panel Posts its Report

The WEA panel has posted its report and the SIL director has responded to it. You can read what he has said here:

http://www.sil.org/about/news/sil-executive-director-describes-changes-response-wea-panel-report

and the report itself here:

http://worldea.org/news/4212/wea-independent-bible-translation-review-panel-concludes-its-work-issues-report-with-ten-recommendations-for-wycliffe-and-sil 

What do you think? Do you have any questions? Feedback? This could be a good place to post them.