Bible Translation and Church Interpreting: Friends or Foes?
In September 2015, the Nida Institute hosted a seminar on Bible Translation and Church Interpreting in Misano, Italy. One of the issues raised was that historically, some Bible translation practitioners had been reticent to recognise the practice of oral or signed interpreting in churches as they felt it was less reliable than written translation.
How would you describe the current situation? As a researcher in church interpreting and multilingual churches, my most recent searches of the literature have suggested that the two fields tend not to interact, with the exception of the work of Theo van der Louw, who work on the translation of the LXX has suggested that interpreters were used at key points in the translation process.
Might those who are already working in church communities as interpreters be good candidate Bible translators? Could Bible translation rediscover ancient translation practices that involved interpreting so as to get a better handle on the oral and performative features uncovered in Bible performace research? Are there any other possible avenues of cooperation?
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I received an article submission for Journal of Language, Culture, and Religion that is a study of church interpreters in Tanzania. The basic findings are that they do not have much biblical training and could use much more. It's in peer review so I'm not sure yet if it will be published. But in looking through the paper myself, there was little or no interaction with Bible translation theory or practice. So that's one example only, but to answer your question, it seems that this researcher did not see a strong connection (or doesn't have experience with BT to make the connection).