Accelerating the Bible Translation Movement

Extracted text from Accelerating_the_BT_Movement.mp4:

Right now in the Bible translation movement we're in a time that's like the end times the Wild West and the period of the judges all rolled into one . Everyone is trying to complete the great milestones in the Bible translation movement starting all the remaining projects that are needed and getting to the point where every language on earth has at least a New Testament that needs it and that certain languages have the whole Bible all everyone's scrambling to get all these these milestones crossed and everyone has their own idea about the best way to do it . There is literally nothing that people will not try right now . The great genius in the Bible translation movement right now is that we have learned to empower the local church to do almost all or all of the process and as we're accelerating the Bible translation movement accomplishment in that way we're gradually racing towards a challenge that's going to arise . Of the 900 least reached language groups that still need Bible translation to occur and there won't be very many local resources and churches and people who are well-educated who are Christians who were there to be empowered by the Bible translation movement many people say the answer is to get nearby church movements to become mission all and reach into these other contexts and become excellent bible translators themselves . All of that is still going to take a great deal of time and energy and we're going to need to develop new methods to cross these unreached least rich and sometimes unengaged contexts . Cross over into those with Bible translation in our quest to try to get faster and accelerated Bible translation and invest money in ways that accelerate the translation movement . A lot of our new methodologies amount to skipping steps in the translation process there are basic steps in the Bible translation process somebody has to do the drafting and somebody has to verify that the draft corresponds to the meaning of the Greek or the Hebrew text and somebody has to verify that the translation is natural in that process and there needs to be some kind of comprehension testing where you verify that when you read in the community with people who are not really accustomed to the Sunday school answers those people are able to understand it the way you expected them to . And then there needs to be some kind of quality control process . So there's the verification of the exit tentacle check that happens early in the process if that's being handled really well by local people then you might not need very much of the same kind of refinement on the end . So one way to accelerate the process is to just don't do the exit tentacle check or just don't comprehension test or just don't verify that it's natural or just don't do any kind of quality refinement process . Sure it's faster but there's still a physics to the process of Bible translation . You get out of Bible translation process what you invest in it . If you decide that you're going to multiply the number of people drafting . You still have to figure out a way to get some real power on the extrajudicial checking so that you can accelerate that part of the process trying to accelerate the Bible translation process with With financial investment is a little bit like saying we're going to take a million dollars and we're going to produce art . You know the big question is not the million dollars the big question is how many artists can you find who can produce an acceptable quality of art in the Bible translation process . It doesn't matter how many people you get involved if none of them have easy access to the correct meaning of the text you still have a flawed process . Since Bible translation is an iterative process where you refine gradually through these stages the quality of the text . If you decide to eliminate the stages it's a little bit like if you went to a college class and you decided that you would write your your essay that you're assigned and just turn in the rough draft you would never turn in the first draft you'd at least read it and you would refine it several times and then you would turn it in and the Bible is no different . You don't want to be turning in your rough draft . If you remove the quality control process then you're left with variation in your results . It's a little bit like a bell curve and the quality control process is intended where instead of getting this wide variation of possible outcomes you control that you only get that upper level that little tail at the top of that top 5 or 10 percent or 3 percent . But if you take away that process of improving the quality you're going to have some translations that just happen to be really great and then some translations that are super average and you're still going to get those really bad translations and that's why we do quality control processes in Bible translation at least to leveraging points exist in the Bible translation movement today that we can take advantage of to accelerate and not lose ground on quality the situation today is different than when the Bible translation movement started . Now virtually every remaining translation need is in the context of an existing completed New Testament or an existing completed bible either in a related language or in a language in which the people are bilingual in there are audio New Testaments available in nearby languages and so the remaining Bible translation needs are in the context of being able to leverage all of the previous existing work in their context so we shouldn't be starting over from scratch . We should be leveraging all the existing work that's been done before as much as we possibly can to accelerate the completion of the task of these milestones but also increase and improve the quality and get cheaper results . There are two ways that I know to leverage the existing Bible translations in nearby languages that I find to be extremely successful if there is a nearby related language that has a complete Bible or a complete new testament then we found great success in doing an adaptation of that written translation in pure text using the parrot text . Enter linear riser tool especially if the grammar of the two languages is in a similar order . It's a powerful tool in that case even in the case where the shared vocabulary between the two languages would only be 30 percent if the grammars are similar then we've been able to use the pair text in our linear as a tool to greatly accelerate getting the first draft and it's a higher quality first draft of the entire New Testament or the entire Bible because you're starting with somebody else's finished product all of their x logical work comes directly into your adaptation the adaptation still needs to go through the translation process and the various steps . It's just that they'll be done more quickly they'll be done at a higher quality they'll be cheaper they'll be at an accelerated rate it's the best of all possible worlds the best opportunity for this kind of adaptation exists when you complete a Bible translation project and the local people are skilled at using pure text and then they can go and help their nearby neighbors to to do one of these adaptations in the nearby language . The other major opportunity we have for leveraging the existing Bible translations is in the area of audio translations and being able to use oral Bible translation tools like the render software to take an existing audio New Testament and use the powerful local skills in the area of oral Bible translation in reality and we'll have the entire process by using the render software all be done outloud with no reading necessary so that the best speakers of the minority languages the ones who didn't go off to school for decades the best speakers are the ones who are or oral preference learners those people will be able to be the core or part of the core of the whole Bible translation process because it's done in audio the wave file becomes the text you can think of both of these methods . Written adaptation and oral Bible translation using the render software to be taking full advantage of existing Bible translations that have been done and the exegesis and the work that's been put into those in the con and the consultant verification that's been put into those and then leveraging that while using the strengths of the local people whether it would be some local translators who've already learned how to use the para text or if it's using the the skills of the guy who interprets the sermons in the local local church from the majority language to the minority language and he's really got a lot of skill in interpretation those local skills building on those strengths adapting also the existing translations to get a powerful leveraging and an acceleration and an increase in quality and a decrease in price . Both of these leveraging points require that the intellectual property owners of the original source text make their text available or make their audio available to the people who are doing the adaptation into another language . And that's why one of the greatest obstacles to being able to accelerate the Bible translation movement is the way intellectual property is not shared between organizations or at least not efficiently shared . If we could find a way to more efficiently share between Bible translation organizations and more efficiently give permissions to make derivative products of existing intellectual property the Bible translation movement could be greatly accelerated .