MAP — Modular Aggregation of Principles for Bible Translation

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/tbtd/75/2

This issue of The Bible Translator includes analyses of the English Revised Jewish Publication Society and Timshel translations, the Tibetan translation tradition, and a secondary translation in Chinese, as well as of translation processes in Guatemala, Malawi, and an East African cluster.

Technical Papers address the translation of biblical terms for “God” in one distinct religious context and of “man” when used in a distinct collective sense, then what constitute poetic features in Hebrew, the role of creativity in translation, and distinctive features of a secondary translation.

Erik Andvik shows how a Tibetan term with an impersonal meaning and very specifically Buddhist connotations, adopted for Christian use by Jesuit missionaries around 1700, has since come to be the standard and unambiguous term for “God” used by Christians in several Tibetan-related languages. David Stein surveys seventy singular collective uses of Hebrew אִישׁ‎ “man, person,” analysing the term in this use as a “situating noun,” and resulting in his rendering of it in the English Revised Jewish Publication Society translation as a certain community’s “side” or “contingent.” Manuel Calaza Schenkel, working from Adele Berlin’s perceptibility principles for parallelism, presents criteria for distinguishing between Biblical Hebrew poetry and elevated prose, then applies them to one prophetic text in Daniel and so offers a recommendation for stichographic layout in translation. Jennifer Dobson, starting from Nida’s parameters of dynamic equivalence, evaluates the role of creativity in the new perspectives, expansions, and domestications of Bonnie Lewis’s recent English Timshel Bible translation. Tianji Ma evaluates the Chinese New Living Translation, a secondary or “daughter” translation of the English New Living Translation with distinctive policies and principles; a detailed comparison of the two is made using a text from Psalm 23.

Practical Papers look at Oral Bible Translation (OBT) principles and practices and translation consultancy.

Fausto Liriano reveals shared oral features of Biblical Hebrew and several Mayan languages and the role of memory, arguing that these support the development of modern OBT practices in Guatemala. Maxwell Chiwoko Banda does something similar for his Malawian context, but also focuses on the results of an extensive Bible engagement survey to advocate for OBT practices. Martha Wade, on the basis of experience in East Africa, weighs up strengths and weaknesses of consultant cluster checking, in terms of both process and quality and quantity of output.

Do look out for more on OBT in our Special Issue in April 2025 on “Quality Assurance in OBT.”

Andy Warren-Rothlin
Marijke de Lang