Translation, Identity, and Community

Nida Institute
11/17/2018
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Capitol Ballroom 3 (Fourth Level) - Hyatt Regency (HR)

Theme: Translation, Identity, and Community
This session will address the role of Bible translation in language communities as both a catalyst and at times, regretfully, a hindrance in the formation of community identity and grassroots social cultural expression. The presenters will draw from different scholarly disciplines like translation studies, socio-cultural studies, the history of exegesis, social semiotics and/or cognitive approaches to analyze specific instances of Bible translation and the impact it has had in specific communities. The explicit question is how Bible translation as a specific praxis, based on a transdisciplinary approach, affects the communities with whom it is accomplished. The session will explore translation as an activity which can become an external doing-for-the-other imposition, as opposed to a doing-with-the other, where the community of the language of translation is not just receiving the translation but engaging with it and actively contributing to its creation. The latter would ideally constitute a mutually enriching enterprise where through localization, translated texts, in different formats, different hermeneutical horizons are fused. The community, through its representatives, emerge as active protagonists of the text, as part of a hermeneutical tapestry. Translation then becomes an enrichment which is integrally part of new theological, sociolinguistic and social-cultural paradigms. Each paper will explore the possibilities, the challenges and the impossibilities of such a tapestry in practice. The presentations will provide instances of either the gradual evolution of this emergence of community identity linked to the text or the disruptive nature of translation in situ, both from a theoretical perspective, as well as with an actual case study of translation work. The appropriation of the biblical text by both the wider community, and the community of faith will thus be in focus.

Marlon Winedt, United Bible Societies, Presiding

Samy Tioyé, United Bible Societies
Bible Translation and Ethnicity Revindication: A Case Study of the Lobi People in Burkina Faso West Africa (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)

Edgar Ebojo, United Bible Societies
Texts, Communities, and Culture of Conversions through “Sacred” Translation: A Look Back into the Future (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)

Stephen Pattemore, Bible Society New Zealand
An Ever-Rolling Stream: How Time Subverts “Translating for” into “Journeying with”: Half a Century of Bible Translation in Urak Lawoi (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)

Brigitte Rabarijaona, United Bible Societies
Island Identity in the Malagasy Bible Translation (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)

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