Translation News Aug 2022

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 International Translation Services (ITS) works in collaboration with colleagues in SIL and other agencies to creatively steward and advance the translation practices, tools, methods, and training necessary to enable a supportive environment for individuals and communities to flourish and engage with Scripture.
We value: Interconnectedness. Capacity Building. Diversity. Innovation.

August 2022

• “It’s a “both-and”! - Greg Dekker
• New Consultants
  • Catherine Crawford - Africa
  • Shalom Devapalan - India
• AQuA (Augmented Quality Assessment) - Dan Whitenack
• Dr. Hessel Visser - new PhD (Person-Gender-Number marking)
• New Pacific Translation Coordinator - Greg Carlson
• Translation Training and Development Updates - Phil King
• Relevance of Translation Theory and Techniques to Textual Criticism - Theo van der Louw
• Quality in Translation Symposium - Greg Dekker
• TCDW 2022 Report - Angie Seow
• New Biblical Hebrew Courses starting October 2022 - Jerusalem Seminary
• Bible Translation Issue of Evangelical Missions Quarterly
  • Heather Pubols - The Translating God
  • Michel Kenmogne - Bible Translation is the Key to a Christian Faith “at Home” in Any Culture
  • Phil King and Dick Kroneman - The Landscape of Bible Translation in the 21st Century
  • Paul Kimbi and Sarah Starrenburg - Collaboration in Bible Translation
  • Swapna Alexander, Bryan Harmelink, and Youngshin Kim, with Jim Killam - Oral Bible Translation is Key to Seeing Scripture in Every Language
  • Jennifer Holloran -8 Lessons Learned in 80 Years of Bible Translation
  • Peter Yuh Kimeng  - The New Testament is Not Enough

Useful Links
SIL Translation Services

• International Leadership Team
• Area Translation Coordinators

“It’s a “both-and”! 
Greg Dekker

In Romans 5:6-8 we are told that it was “while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Then we’re told that, although it is easy to understand why someone might give their life for someone who is perceived as good and worthy of such sacrifice, contrary to our expectation, “God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Obviously, there are three very prominent points in this passage. One, we were [utterly] helpless. No great effort on our part could change our state of affairs, our separation from God. Two, it was while we were enemies of God that he performed a self-sacrificial act to rescue us. And three, it was a demonstration of his love for us that he did this. Jesus came proclaiming the Good News. And he demonstrated his love for his enemies through kenosis and sacrifice.

We often talk about proclamation and demonstration as two aspects of Mission. But the example of Jesus is that they are inseparable. To be imitators of God is to “proclaim and demonstrate” the Gospel. In Jesus, we have the perfect model of what it means to do who we are. If Mission is our identity, then demonstrating God’s love for others goes hand-in-hand with proclaiming his love for others. To demonstrate is to proclaim his love. To proclaim is to demonstrate his love.

Our pastor recently challenged us in a message by asking us the question, “How uncomfortable are you willing to be, and what degree of awkwardness are you willing to experience in telling and showing the love of Christ to others?” Comfort is not only the enemy of discipleship, it is the enemy of Mission.

The Vision of SIL is We long to see people flourishing in community using the languages they value most. There is a lot loaded into that word “flourishing”. It speaks of “transformation”, “thriving” and “experiencing wholeness”. It describes our desire that people experience the abundant life the Scripture talks about. And for me, it succinctly captures what I imagine to be the impact of proclaiming and demonstrating the Gospel.

As followers of Jesus, this is our goal: flourishing communities where people understand and apply the truths of Scripture in their own lives and communities, and where people experience “life of abundant” as a result of the removal of practices, beliefs, and injustice that impede a life of abundance under the rule of God. We demonstrate our love for others through provision of the Word of God and through collaborative interventions which serve to remove impediments to transformation. It’s a “both-and”. It’s about both proclaiming and demonstrating! 

New Consultants
Catherine Crawford  & Shalom Devapalan

Catherine Crawford - West Africa
Congratulations to Catherine Crawford (WAF). Michael Jemphrey (SIL Francophone Africa Domain Team Leader for Translation) announced that the SIL Accreditation Committee for Translation Consultants in Africa has reviewed her dossier and accepted the recommendation that Catherine be declared a translation consultant. She was mentored by Anne-Marie Giménez. She has been a Translation CiT since 2018, checking OT and NT translations with increasing independence. In 2018, she gave a presentation on the use of a participatory approach to the exegesis of a Psalm at the Francophone Bible Translation Conference in Ouagadougou. She then published an article based on this presentation in the journal, Le Sycomore.

Catherine has been with SIL in Mali since 2006, serving as an exegete for an Old Testament project. She values the ongoing process of learning Hebrew well and working as much as possible from the Hebrew text. She has used participatory methods in both LPM work and teaching, and enjoys facilitating others. She has an MA (Honors) in Modern Languages from Oxford University (1988), a Diploma in Biblical and Intercultural Studies from All Nations Christian College (2005), the six-month Hebrew program (2011) at The Home for Bible Translators (JCBT) in Israel, and an MA in Classical Hebrew (2019) from the University of the Holy Land, Institute for Biblical Languages and Translation in Jerusalem.

Shalom Devapalan - India
Congratulations to Shalom Devapalan (India) who works with Christian Education Trust (CET) and also assisted Rhema for the Nations, on completing all the requirements for certification as an entity-level Translation Consultant, including completion of the Asia TCDW 2020. Angie Foo and her Asia Bible Translation Coordination Team have verified that he is a qualified Translation Consultant and is now able to work independently with translation teams.

Shalom's primary mentor and supervising consultant was George Edward. Shalom has also been mentored by Matthew and Donna Toulmin, Bruce and Kathy Cain, James and Sue Lloyd-Williams, Jim Watters, Elizabeth Smith, Miriam Weber, Nathanael Jonadab, Nag, Amber Jasa, and Barbara Hodder.

Shalom completed the IICCC (WIN) General course (1994), then received the MA Linguistics (1996) from Annamalai University in Chidambaram, and was awarded the PhD in Linguistics (2002). Shalom has assisted with completing the New Testament in Angika, Surjapuri and PanchParghania, which were published by the Bible Society of India.

AQuA (Augmented Quality Assessment) 
Dan Whitenack

Dan Whitenack, a data scientist in SIL’s Innovation, Development and Experimentation (IDX) group, provides an update on the Augmented Quality Assessment (AQuA) project which is harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to “augment” the translation checking process.

Current functionality - In the first year of the project (2021), AQuA worked to validate the use of AI technology in measuring relevant translation qualities. This year, the AQuA team has been working in a multidisciplinary and cross-organizational manner to further validate and apply the following specific methods for efficiently probing the “big three” qualities of Bible translations:

• Accuracy via semantic similarity, agreement similarity, and word alignment
• Clarity via automated question answering
• Naturalness via consistency of readability and reading level 

     

Use in the real world! -  Additionally, AQuA is working this year to (1) create a practical user interface that will allow easy use of the technology by non-technical audiences; and (2) conduct trials with real users (consultants and translators) to determine the best places to insert this technology in the checking and translation processes. These prototypes have been tested to analyze real world translations in 5 translations from Middle East/North Africa (MENA) and Southeast Asia. Among other learnings, these trials confirmed that AQuA is generating warnings on quality that align with the human checking process and is enabling consultants to understand translation qualities “at-a-glance.” Some comments from translation workers:

• “This kind of visualization would save me hours of time preparing for each translation check” - an SIL consultant, referring to a prototype visualization of word alignment
• “When I showed the translation team the AQuA report, they literally shed tears of joy, because AQuA was able to independently confirm the quality changes made during review.” - a project coordinator for a translation project in MENA 

Plans for scaling up - Although there are still more experiments and fine-tuning needed, the prototyping and real world trials have confirmed the viability of AQuA. For the third year of the project, the AQuA team will:

• Further develop the AQuA user interface to support easier real world usage and to integrate additional techniques for assessing Text and Oral Bible Translations
• Determine the best practices around the use of this technology in translation workflows and develop/deploy training materials to catalyze adoption among Translation consultants and others involved in checking translation quality
• Coordinate with software engineers and the Scripture Forge team to integrate the AQuA user interface with easy to use program tools,  and with Paratext

Dr. Hessel Visser - Congratulations 
PhD Completion

Congratulations to our SIL Botswana (under SIL-SOA) colleague, Hessel Visser (from Wycliffe Netherlands), on the successful June 2022 defense of his dissertation, Translating Person, Gender and Number into Naro: PGN-markers in Naro and their impact on Bible Translation, at the Theological University of Apeldoorn (Netherlands). Hessel is a Bible Translation consultant with a special focus on Khoesan and Bantu languages, in addition to Oral Bible Translation.

Hessel's dissertation focuses on the challenges and opportunities that PGN-markers (person-gender-number) provide in translating the Bible. His research question: "What are the challenges and opportunities that the “PGN-markers” in Naro pose to a translator of the New Testament, and what translation strategies do they require?" Naro, one of the Khoe click languages of Southern Africa, boasts 23 PGN-markers. For "we, you and they," Naro has about six translation options each. It requires indication of person, gender and number in all (pro)nominal references, so that a translator must research which PGN must be used for every referent . The core of the dissertation consists of three parts:

(1) Analysis of the PGN-markers in Naro, with a study of where data about person, gender and number can be found in the Greek New Testament. Gender in Naro appears to be flexible. PGNs do not indicate definiteness. Naro has a dual, and indicates clusivity.

(2) Challenges which PGN-markers provide to a translator:

• general translation-technical
• general exegetical
• cultural: both source and receptor culture impact PGN use
• hermeneutical: PGN use with regard to intended applications, in prophecies and in parallel passages
• discourse challenges

(3) Possibilities provided by PGN-markers: Naro is able to indicate participant differences, contrasts and subject changes in a subtle way. Nuances that are not visible in Greek become visible in Naro.

In addition to the Khoesan languages, Uralic, some Semitic (and other Afroasiatic), Pama-Nyungan and some Indo-European languages use dual while many languages have gender in the singular and plural pronouns.  Hessel Visser's dissertation on making decisions about translating dual and gender for pronouns is a good resource for translators in all of those language families and shows the rich impact of these decisions on exegesis.

New Pacific Translation Coordinator 
Greg Carlson

As of July 2022, Greg Carlson has assumed the role of SIL Pacific Translation Coordinator. Greg and his wife Bethann began working with SIL in Vanuatu in 1991 as translation advisors in the North Tanna and Whitesands languages. They helped the local communities produce their New Testaments and also did linguistic research, literacy and Scripture Engagement.  Following that, Greg served as the SIL Vanuatu Director. He completed an MDiv at Fuller Seminary and an MA in linguistics at UTA. He has three adult children, all raised in Vanuatu, all married, and they have made Greg and Bethann grandparents three times over.

Translation Training & Development Updates 
Phil King

The Bible Translation Training and Development (BTTD) Community of Practice (CoP) will be meeting again on 18th of August. Please click the links below if you'd like to join in the conversation! The session will be held on EMDC online, at two different times: 

• BTTD CoP – East (1030 UTC) https://emdc.online/go/876
• BTTD CoP – West (1530 UTC) https://emdc.online/go/877

This month we will be hearing from Bryan Harmelink about the Language & Translation in the Mission of God curriculum that he has been developing, which is the basis for various initiatives he is supporting. The  curriculum created with conscious awareness of current realities in the global Church and the need for a foundation of missiological and biblical-theological reflection. The courses in this curriculum focus on an approach to translation for speakers and signers as translators, building on an understanding of their multilingual practices and tacit language-use knowledge. As always, there will also be time to connect with each other around the presentation and explore implications for your own work.

Competency-Based Certification (CBC): More and more people are beginning to use the Competency-Based Certification (CBC) tools to track their professional development as consultants. SIL International Training has now developed a Consulting Competencies website with tips and resources to support consultants-in-training and their mentors as they develop general consulting competencies (things like interpersonal skills, mentoring skills, or technology for consulting). Please visit https://consultantcompetencies.org/ to explore more about CBC and the resources that are available there. I'm still very keen to hear about your top recommendations for resources to support specific translation skills for consultants, so that I can build a parallel website. Please email me with your ideas. Thanks!

Relevance of Translation Theory and Techniques to Textual Criticism
Theo van der Louw

Last October 2021, Theo van der Louw (SIL Translation Consultant) was awarded a Pike Center Small Research Grant for a project entitled “Translation Theory and Translation Techniques in the Septuagint and Their Relevance for the Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.” This research addresses a problem faced by translators (or rather, writers of aids for translators and commentaries) of the Old Testament, namely, the problem of evaluating variants in the manuscripts of the source text to help identify the text that stood at the beginning of the textual transmission. The research hypothesis is that a better understanding of the translation techniques of the Septuagint translators will help us to better explain the “deviant” renderings in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) — helping to identify when they reflect translation techniques versus when they give evidence for an actual variant in the Hebrew manuscript that the translators had before them.

This grant made it possible for Theo to visit libraries, purchase literature, and present his findings at a conference. And the resulting outcome is to be a book chapter in volume 3C of Textual History of the Bible. From September 2021 to May 2022, he worked on this project. His paper is ready to be presented at the congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate studies (August 5-7, 2022) in Zürich, Switzerland.

Quality in Translation Symposium
Greg Dekker

The Pike Center for Integrative Scholarship, in collaboration with SIL International Translation Services, the Nida Institute, Biblica, The Seed Company, and Dallas International University, announce that it will host an Exploratory Symposium on the theme of Translation Quality. It will be held online (most likely through EMDC) from 8-10 December 2022 UTC 12:00 - 16:00 (four hours per day).

The Call for Papers states that the Symposium "welcomes presentations by practitioners using a wide range of approaches in the many contexts where the Bible Translation Movement works. The two basic questions the Series seeks to understand are: (1) how do field projects achieve good quality with regard to issue X, and (2) how do they know they have achieved the desired quality? Issue X may be any of the issues that field projects face, as for example, textual issues, process issues, ownership issues, or issues around speed and impact.”

The deadline for submitting a proposal is 12 August 2022 with notification of acceptance around 2 September 2022. The submission should be a concept paper that may be as short as a page, but can be longer. See the Call For Papers for a full description of the theme, the symposium format, and the submission process. Feel free to share The Call with any colleagues who may be interested.

TCDW 2022 Report
Angie Seow

Angie Seow and Steve Doty co-directed the 2022 Translation Consultant Development Workshop (TCDW) which was held online from 30 May till 01 July 2022. There were 22 CiTs enrolled and 18 completed the classroom training. They came from a number of different partner Bible Translation organizations. The staff (20) were from SIL, Seed Company, Faith Comes By Hearing, and Pioneer Bible Translators.

Feedback from CiTs, translation teams, and staff was mostly positive, even though some found the workload quite heavy. Significant improvements were made to the classroom portion of the training. This was the first time the online checking segment was incorporated into the workshop.

This TCDW was totally online, using pre-recorded videos, live discussions on Zoom, homework that was submitted and responded to on email, and supervised checking sessions on Zoom with language teams in MSEA. The whole workshop was five weeks long, and consisted of three parts:

• Two weeks of classroom instruction (including discussions on Zoom and homework)
• One week of practice, finding problems in a back translation of 1 Thessalonians
• Two weeks of supervised checking on real translation projects using Paratext and Zoom

New Biblical Hebrew Courses starting October 2022
Jerusalem Seminary

Jerusalem Seminary’s (JS) School of Hebrew (Hebrew for the Nations) has taught Biblical Hebrew to two cohorts of Bible Translators and consultants in 2020 and 2021, with each cohort being taught by two Israeli Hebrew for the Nations certified instructors.  And now JS is bringing this communicative model with two teachers for each class to two, 3-month courses and one, 40-week long course starting in October 2022. While the courses are live on Mondays & Thursdays: 9:00-11:10 AM Eastern Time (4:00-6:10 PM Jerusalem Time) they are also recorded so catching up and review is possible.  The prices listed here reflect the Early Bird Special which is valid until 15 September 2022.

• Biblical Hebrew as a Living Language (Level 1) - Beginners welcome! Learn Biblical Hebrew as a living language from Israelis (Hebrew for the Nations certified instructors) using an interactive spoken Biblical Hebrew methodology! 4 Credits (60 hours) 600 USD.
• Biblical Hebrew as a Living Language (Level 2) - This offering continues education in Biblical Hebrew through speaking, reading, and writing. It either requires a prerequisite by completion of Level 1 or one is required to successfully complete a Hebrew placement test to enter the course. 4 Credits (60 hours) 600 USD.
• And a new course offering is Biblical Hebrew (BHLL) Training for Bible Translation Consultants (BTC)!  This year-long course takes experienced Bible Translation Consultants or CiTs with no or little knowledge of Biblical Hebrew to a level that allows one to start thinking in Biblical Hebrew at an advanced beginner level.  6 Credits (80 hours) 1,000 USD.

Jerusalem Seminary also has three other Bible-related classes offered in October 2022 that may be helpful broadly for the Bible Translation worker: 1)  Celebrating Biblical and Messianic Feasts in Early Christian Traditions; 2) Discovering Jewish Life: Then and Now; 3) Israel Matters: A Theology of People and Land.  Check out the JS course catalog here.

Bible Translation Issue 
Evangelical Missions Quarterly 

Many of our colleagues have published articles in this recent issue of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly (EMQ) Volume 58 Issue 3 July–September 2022 which has the theme of "Bible Translation." This edition of EMQ delves into the global Bible translation movement. Missionaries, church leaders, and other staff working for Bible translation agencies give a view of where they find inspiration and where they continue to wrestle. And because language and scriptures are so critical to cross-cultural mission, you’ll find overlap with your own areas of ministry. Articles include:

• Michel Kenmogne - Bible Translation is the Key to a Christian Faith “at Home” in Any Culture: Bible translation initiates a cultural appropriation of Christian faith that deepens understanding and ownership of the gospel. In unchurched regions, it introduces Christian concepts. And where a Church is already established, it furthers spiritual maturity, theological formation, and identity affirmation.
• Phil King and Dick Kroneman - The Landscape of Bible Translation in the 21st Century: The rich and diverse landscape of Bible translation, today, brings together past wisdom and present innovative opportunities to meet ongoing challenges and explore new territories.
• Kyle Harris - Multilingualism and Ministry: Missionaries involved in all aspects of ministry from church planting to discipleship to Bible translation must consider language in their strategies to effectively communicate the gospel. But multilingualism complicates decisions about which language(s) to use.
• Paul Kimbi and Sarah Starrenburg - Collaboration in Bible Translation: Scripture translation is experiencing unprecedented progress as a result of a determined commitment to collaboration. This core value of Bible translation work is demonstrated in local projects all the way up to global strategy .
• Brigitte Rabarijaona - Solving the Consultant Dilemma: Bible translation consultants’ expertise and skills are pivotal in ensuring quality translations. The current shortage of consultants slows Bible translation progress. To overcome this problem, we must evaluate the root causes.
• Marisa Sorenson - The Time for the Deaf is Now: The world’s 300+ Deaf people groups have long been denied access to the Scriptures in their native languages – sign languages. But advancements in accessible technology have made sign language Bible translation a reality.
• Sensor Joseph Msimbete - Engaging Deaf Tanzanian Children with Scripture: The current Bible translation available in Tanzanian Sign Language is too difficult for some children to understand because of their limited language ability and life experiences. But sign translations of Bible stories are making a difference.
• Swapna Alexander, Bryan Harmelink, and Youngshin Kim, with Jim Killam - Oral Bible Translation is Key to Seeing Scripture in Every Language: Literacy does not need to be a necessary step for people to engage with God’s Word. Oral Bible translation enables more people to engage in translation and gives more communities access to God’s Word in their language faster.
• A. Steven Evans - The Jesus Factor: Jesus was a master storyteller. Oral Bible storying follows his example and makes scripture accessible in more languages to more communities around the world.
• Natalia Piroshenko and Sofia Ivanov with Lincoln Brunner - Equipping the Church for Church-Centric Bible Translation: When local churches own and run Bible translation projects, communities of believers experience spiritual growth in the way that the early church did. It facilitates greater transformation and makes the gospel available faster to everyone in the community.
• Jennifer Holloran - 8 Lessons Learned in 80 Years of Bible Translation: Much has changed since Wycliffe Bible Translators was founded in 1942. But our calling has remained the same – to help people encounter God through his Word in a language and form they can clearly understand. 
• Trevor Yoakum - Rethinking Orality
• Peter Yuh Kimeng  - The New Testament is Not Enough: Many language communities around the world that only have the New Testament are asking for the Old Testament, but resources to do this are scarce. However, for the New Testament to be fully understood and enculturated, translating the Old Testament must be prioritized.  

Useful Links

• Bible Translation 2023 Conference - 13-17 October 2023
• Journal of Translation
• SIL Senior Translation Consultants
• Email the SIL International Translation Resources Office
• International Translation Services ILS Google page
• Join/visit the SIL