How to Translate the Bible in 14 (not so easy) Steps

How to Translate the Bible in 14 (not so easy) Steps

It takes years, even decades to complete a Bible translation. It is a painstaking process that requires input from dozens of people. MAF flights serve SIL at every stage of the process from the initial scripture engagement assessment at the beginning where they hear from the community to the final delivery of scripture. Laura Robison, Country Director for SIL in South Sudan, takes us through the process step by step.

1/ START WITH A STORY

There are four different main styles within Scripture. A good portion of the Bible is narrative, which means stories. Then there’s poetry (Psalms) which has its own unique translation challenges, prophecy (the major and minor prophets), and finally the epistles which are the letters of Paul.

Narrative is usually the easiest so that’s what people tend to start with before they move into the other books. When you begin translating, ideally you want to start with a book like Ruth or Jonah because they’re more narrative and they’re shorter. If you start with something like Revelation, it will be hard and discouraging.

2/ TRANSLATE IDEAS NOT WORDS

You can’t translate word for word. Word for word translation has never actually existed. If it did exist it would be the vocabulary of one language with the grammar of another, and that just wouldn’t work. They all have some adaptation. A lot of times, as translators you’ll go through a 2–3week introductory course to learn translation principles. In that course they’re introduced to thinking about things like figures of speech and

idioms and hyperbole. All those things that are present in the Bible and how would you handle translating those. They’re not just straightforward.

3/ WORK TOGETHER

When it comes to actually doing the translation, usually there’s a team of two or three or four people drafting a section each. Together they create a first draft which is the initial translation.

4/ RESEARCH YOUR SUBJECT

A lot of times the translators don’t know Greek and Hebrew, but they’re expected to use at least three English versions or Arabic, whatever is easiest, to compare not just follow one English translation. They will also look at different commentaries to bring in the different interpretations of scripture that are there. All the time they’re making sure they’re being true to the text and not just choosing one interpretation.

5/ BREAK IT DOWN INTO BITE SIZED CHUNKS

The translators will start by reading the whole book in one go. Next, they read through each chapter which gives them the context of the book first and then the chapter. Then they go, not necessarily verse by verse, but section by section within a chapter and work on translating it.

6/ SOMETIMES THERE ISN’T A WORD

As much as there are many similarities, language we can sometimes let you down. There are many words in the Bible that don’t exist in an indigenous

setting. Greek, Hebrew and English are very open to abstracts. Things like righteousness and holiness. We call those things key terms. They are basically key themes throughout the scripture or very key ideas that need to be understood for the whole picture of Scripture.

Other key terms that need special attention include things like temple and synagogue and God. Usually, that needs the community to get together and decide with an exegetical advisor or some help of this is what was initially meant in the Hebrew or Greek in that time. We ask, in your culture, what do you have that’s similar?

People can either decide to adopt a word if they don’t have a word for it or just bring one from outside. And decide that’s what they’re now going to use. An example is the case of baptism. Sometimes people use ‘baptisma’ because that’s what the church has been using in their home area, so they just continue with that. You need to explain it however, so you add a footnote in the Scripture to say that the word is foreign, and this is what it means.

7/ AIM FOR UNDERSTANDING

Sometimes people choose to use a phrase instead of a word to describe what that word represents, which helps with clarity. But if you do that for everything, it makes the Bible really long and hard to read. If everywhere that you have righteousness, you have a six-word phrase, it can make it hard to read. It’s a balance of, where do you use a foreign word with a footnote, and where can you use a phrase? A lot of languages here explain ‘righteous’ as ‘holy good.’

There’s a good number of the key terms where the word substitution doesn’t fully grasp the meaning. They really have to grapple with what is meant by this abstract idea and figure out how to explain or represent it in Scripture.

8/ GET INPUT FROM OTHERS

Periodically, the translators will come to what’s called a team review. They’ll bring their drafts to

the whole translation team who will be asking questions like: Does this sound natural in our language? Do we think you’ve been true to the text?

After that their exegetical advisor will do an exegetical review, which is looking at whether they’ve been true to the original languages and text bringing in other commentaries or the grammar of Hebrew that speaks to Greek. Based on this feedback they’ll do a team revision.

9/ ASK THE AUDIENCE

At this point they do a community check to check more for naturalness and clarity. They’ll come up with different questions around sections of the book to make sure that it’s clear to the community, not being misunderstood, and the meaning is coming across as it’s supposed to. They’ll make revisions based on the feedback from the community.

10/ SEEK EXPERT ADVICE

The consultant check is where someone that’s trained in biblical languages and has been in translation for quite a long time and has risen to the level of consultant will then look through it again and say, “Here’s some areas where I think there might be misunderstanding,” or “is this clear in that way?” After that check, they’ll produce what we call it a trial edition.

11/ DON’T SHORTCUT THE PROCESS

Cultural and language differences mean that things that can go wrong if you don’t have those checks in place. I remember hearing an example from a few years ago in another country. They were just starting to work on the parables of Jesus. The culture had their own parable which made it a logical place to start. The difference was that in their cultural context, a parable had to have the moral at the end of it whereas Jesus’ parables often don’t.

The consultants realized over time that the translator was adding this extra tag. Because

that was the culture, they just automatically did that in their drafting. The translator had chosen what they assumed was the moral of the story. Sometimes it was probably correct, although not necessarily the whole thing. Sometimes it may have been completely different from what Jesus intended. If you do something very quickly or don’t have all the checks in place, you might not catch that. And then what, what’s being represented in the Bible?

12/ PUT THE BIBLE ON TRIAL

With all books, whether it’s literacy, scripture, engagement or translation, we do trial editions. That’s getting a small number of books out into the community to use and then give feedback on. You do a community check, but that can only involve so many people and only lasts so longand sometimes you don’t see things until you’re actually using it. With a trial edition they have one final opportunity to feedback, “Oh, this was really confusing!” or “This doesn’t sound like our language.” With all of that feedback, they’ll raise it up to a first edition and add it to the Scripture Library that they’ve been working on.

13/ GET THE WORD INTO PRINT

It takes all of those steps and more to get to a final translation. With the final text you still have the formatting, typesetting for print, and proofing, publishing and procuring the finished bookswhich are not part of the actual translation process but have to be thought about too. We’ll have an audio version created at the same time as the Bible is published as a book, so people can engage with it in different ways.

14/ DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER – READ IT!

When the bibles get delivered, it’s exciting. Some people see that as the completion of that workand it is something significant to celebrate. A Bible translation is really just the beginning. The next

step is engagement with the community to train the church leaders, and train teachers for literacy. This work can be ongoing.

The Bible dedication of the Tennet New Testament in Arillo in January this year wouldn’t have been possible without MAF. We had some key church leaders fly in from Juba to the Tennet dedication. They wouldn’t have been able to take part in their community’s dedication if they weren’t able to join the flight. MAF had reopened the airstrip and flew the Bibles just a few days before. I went to Arilo by road once. It took us two full days - seven hours to Torit and then seven or eight hours from there. We definitely appreciate MAF!

We often use MAF shuttle flights to reach communities for other aspects of our work. Back in 2013, 2014, we could have still done these things by going by road. But now we couldn’t do those things without MAF because of the security situation on the roads.

Written by Laura Robison, SIL