A Brief History of MAP

MAP was born out of a collaborative interagency exploration of the possible need for a new manual for Bible translation. In August 2012, representatives from a number of Bible agencies (among them The Nida Institute, UBS Global Bible Translation, SIL International, The Seed Company, and the Netherlands Bible Society) gathered in Reading, England, to discuss the rich tradition of past translation manuals and the emerging need for more current and dynamic resources for training translators around the globe. While committed to preserving the best of the pedagogical practices and the wealth of concrete examples found in past manuals, the group sought ways to leverage the power and potential of new technologies now available and increasingly accessible. The major outcome of this initial meeting was committed interagency support for a new way of imagining translation pedagogy – a new way of teaching, learning and sharing resources within a dynamic, collaborative, constantly evolving, multimedia ecosystem. This virtual environment soon came to be known as ‘MAP’ (Modular Aggregation of Principles for Bible Translation).

Several months later, in December 2012, a second, larger interagency gathering was held, this time in Misano, Italy. The goal of this second meeting was to develop the nascent idea of MAP further through discussions of scope and content, as well as through experiments with several possible technologies in which such an ecosystem might be grown. In the end, two technologies were selected as a starting place: Bloomfire would provide space for the aggregation of resources of all sorts, as well as for broad-ranging dialogue and the posing of questions; Canvas LMS would be the platform used to create more structured, specific curricular spaces tailored to the needs of particular, localized learning communities. These tools have since helped foster the initial seeds of an ecosystem and have already been successfully deployed in several diverse training situations. 

The Nida Institute provides all administrative and technical support for MAP, but the interagency participation in generating content and sustaining conversation is essential to the health and potential of the ecosystem. All Nida-sponsored training efforts now make use of and participate in the development of MAP.  In the next few years, we hope MAP will continue to become a regular and robust space for promoting ongoing dialogue and encouraging the sharing of cutting-edge resources in support of translator training. MAP’s ability to leverage the mobile capacities of the ecosystem’s current tools will facilitate access to training materials even in areas with low bandwidth, and the broad scope of its content will serve to increase the intersemiotic and multimedia sensibilities of translators and trainers alike. We are also working toward greater integration of MAP with ParaTExt resources and training. 

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