Video assisted translation

Harry and Geri Harm have been working with the Choctaw Bible Translation Committee (CBTC) for more than a year and a half. Half of the 25 Choctaw churches are represented on the CBTC, and working groups have been formed to accomplish various goals. One of these working groups has been translating the first two chapters of  Luke.

For many NAB mother tongue translators, one of the difficulties of translating the Bible is that they often have difficulty visualizing the biblical setting. When the text mentions a house, they are likely to picture the kind of house with which they are most familiar. In many cases this is not a problem, but in some cases it can be disastrous, for example, a group with steep roof houses translating the passage in  Acts which has Peter on the roof. In the past, translators have used pictures and background texts to help explain the biblical culture.

When the Genesis Project (New Media Bible) produced videos based on the books of  Genesis and  Luke, the filming was done in the Middle East using local actors. The video uses two soundtracks. The first soundtrack contains the background sounds, for example, animal and crowd noises. It also contains the actors’ dialogue in Hebrew. The second soundtrack, the foreground, contains the text of a translation of  Genesis or  Luke. The video which we used did not contain this second soundtrack.

Before the  Luke translation group began to translate the Greek text, we introduced the  Luke video and explained how it was produced. They watched the first two chapters. While the video was playing, we provided commentary and called their attention to significant actions and props.

By watching the video, the working group was able to get a better idea of the appearance of the temple, both inside and out. The video also showed the incense offering. All of these details made the initial translation easier and better.

One problem with video as a medium is that it sometimes includes action which is not mentioned in the text, or for which the text does not provide details. As example of this in the first part of the  Luke video is the selection of Zechariah to offer the incense offering. The text does not indicate how the selection took place, and the commentaries present differing views. The video shows one priest selecting Zechariah using a method which looks like a form of “eenie meenie minie moe.” We told the working group that we were not certain how the selection took place, and that we were not bound by the video. However, since the CBTC is planning to produce a Choctaw version of the video, we did not want to contradict what is shown on the video, if at all possible. The resulting draft translation described the selection process in a generic manner. It did not contradict the video, but it did not limit itself to the method depicted in the video.

We expect to use video for the rest of the translation of  Luke and probably for  Genesis as well. Video provides the most help for passages which contain descriptions of background or events. It is not as helpful for passages which are mainly dialogue. So far, it has proved to be very useful. We expect it to speed up the translation process, to increase the accuracy of the translation, and to help prevent conflicts between the translation and the video.