What should be translated first from the Bible? OT or NT?

What should be the order or priority of books of the Bible need to be translation?

I think "do the right things' is as important as, if not more important than “do the things right.' The right order is also important.

• One of the pattern is from the easiest to the most difficult.

A number of Bible translation projects start with short narratives to more complicated epistle, than to poetry. Teams can building up the competency of translation. If you have a team of translators, you may find different mother tongue translator fit well with different genre. Good matching of the translators along with the right materials being translated is also important. You can imagine some translators tend to translate freely with imagination may do well in poetry genre but not the other. For more technical aspect for biblical poetry genre translation, you may search Ernest Wendland's posting.

With natural language generation project like TBTA,　I think Pauline logical epistles can be as easier as some narratives. BTW, some narratives in the gospels mixed with poetry genre can increase the difficulty of the translation. I think machine translation and NLP(natural language processing) may find poetry genre more challenging in general.

• Theological significance and relevance to the receiving communities.

One of my concern is that NLP methodology or other innovative methodology, e.g. MAST, for Bible translation is the nature of a kind of experimental. I think it is important to have the foundation theological framework being translated first. I think the relevance and theological significance factors can also apply to other Bible translation projects.

Thus, I wonder whether we can consider the Apostolic Creed have a high priority, then we may consider translating the portions of scripture which are the bases of the creed. Then we may also consider to translate materials introducing basic ideas about the content of the good news and the importance of the Bible in order to build the community of the users. After that we can keep engaging community to use and participate in revision for TBTA or other BT products.

• Parallel passages， e.g. in synoptic gospels, new testament quote from old testament

We may consider strategy for make good use of existing translated text in synoptic gospel or new testament. Once you build a larger vernacular corpus, I wonder whether the statistical computer help/checking may improve significantly.

• For marketing value and demonstration

I think it is important to produce a minimal viable product and outcome as showcase. I think the product is not merely the translated text but the people being transformed/blessed through the translation product and process.

Thus, we may need to ask the question "what can bring the impact from a product with relative short/reasonable time of cycle of production and evaluation?" This may help us to think about what media and what channel of distributions.

• Divine calling for individual,

Since many of the Bible translation practitioners consider our participation as response to God's calling. I think it is fine to work for books or projects which is not logical from human's point of view in some cases.

• Engaging prayer team/network for every book and/or every TBTA project

As we consider Bible translation as ministry, shall we ask the pledge of at least a couple Christians or churches to pray regularly for the projects before we start a projects? We can launch invitation for prayer from facebook, linkedin or other social network. We should be accountable to our prayer partners. How?

• Shorter meaningful segment may have high priority

Shorter meaningful segment even in poetry can consider high priority.(Thank you for comment from Willis Ottis and Robert Bascom)

• New Testament first?

Some people have the following logic: BT is a tool for evangelism, New Testament is the completion of the Old Testament, New Testament as a shortest meaningful unit and life is too short for the whole Bible. Thus, New Testament first.

In my humble opinion, I think there are other options and following consideration.

1. depend on the acceptability of the host culture, old testament can be good common starting point to communicate the whole Bible in both old and new testament.

2. depend on the importance of the sequences of chronological logic, some community may prefer chronological with a beginning. Certainly old testament can bridge the gap.

3. Consider selection from old testament as suggested by SIL or UBS or other BT organization. I think there are at least two article from SIL and UBS mentioned about the recommendation of selection of Old Testament being translated. Then the gaps of the selected passage can be filled later until the whole 66 books being translated.