New Reader Program

Extracted text from NEWREAD.DOC:

UBS TRANSLATION OFFICERS MANUAL UBS The New Reader Program Manual, 1992 Testing New Reader Drafts New Reader texts must pass through the usual exegetical review. They are special translations of the original, not a rewriting of those original documents, and as such must be an faithful as a regular common language translation. If a chosen selection proves impossible to translate with the necessary simplicity, without sacrificing accuracy, then that selection should be dropped in favor of one which better lends itself to amplification. But before the texts are sent off for typesetting, it in also a good idea to actually test them with real new readers. After all, the materials will have been produced by expert readers who are only predicting where reading problems probably can be avoided. When new readers of the target group actually start trying to read, many unrecognized problems surface. Testing also assists in providing a basis for estimating and evaluating future texts. It creates an increased understanding of the features that make a text simple. The newly drafted text should be tested after grading in a field situation that measures how adequate the text is in achieving its intention. Since the kind of grading that we do in the Bible Societies does not strictly involve the technical assessment of the materials in terms of individual scores, the testing we do must be fairly simple and practical. Testing should take into account pragmatic questions such as: 1. What is the life-style of your readers? (i.e. culture, religion, sex, age, etc.) 2. How interested are they in this particular text? 3. What do they know about the background of the text, the illustration, etc? Do they have enough background knowledge to assist them in understanding it? 4. What do they have to take for granted to understand the text? 5. Which of their own beliefs must be temporarily laid aside in order to understand the text? 6. Why are these readers being given this text? Having found answers to these questions and others, then we can go ahead and apply some of the well-known theories of testing. There is a body of scientific and practical literature one can draw on to determine what features ought to be tested and the methods of testing them. Among the tests that can be applied to drafts of New Readers texts are the following: reading aloud, readand-tell, question-and-answer, "cloze" tests, and balanced comparison tests. UBS Translation Consultants can offer valuable help in setting up such tests.