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Importance of a Translation Team
Translating the Bible is a very large and difficult task that may take many people to accomplish. This module will discuss the skills that will be needed by members of the Bible translation team, and the responsibilities that these people will have. Some people will have many skills and responsibilities, and other people will have only a few. But it is important that every Bible translation team includes enough people to make sure that all of these skills are represented on the team.
Church Leaders
Before starting a translation project, as many church networks as possible should be contacted and encouraged to become a part of the translation and even to send some of their people to be a part of the translation team. They should be consulted and asked for their input into the translation project, its goals, and its process.
In most successful projects, a strategic leader (or team of leaders) with a desire to serve and equip the church that speaks the language is a catalyzing and motivating force to unite the churches, inaugurate the project, and move the project forward. These leaders are often the drivers that form the translation committee and help to oversee from the beginning the efforts of the larger translation effort and its integration into the formation and growth of the church in the people group.
Translation Committee
It is good if the leaders of these churches and church networks can form a committee to guide the work, choose the translators, resolve problems that arise, and encourage the churches to pray for the work and to support the work financially.
This committee can also choose the pastors and other leaders who will check the translation at the Accuracy and Validation stages.
When it comes time, committee members can make decisions about the format of the translation and how it will be distributed. They can also encourage the churches to use the translated Scriptures.
This committee should also plan for the maintenance of the translation after it has been translated and distributed. The committee may want to appoint someone to review the comments and suggestions for improvement that will come from the churches that use the translation. Door43 provides a place for people to access the translation and also to leave these kinds of comments.
Translators
These are the people who will do the work of making the translation drafts. They will be appointed by the Translation Committee. They need to be people who are native speakers of the target language, who can read the source language (the Gateway Language) very well, and who are respected in the community for their Christian character. For more details about these things, see Translator Qualifications.
Besides making the first drafts, these people will form the core of the translation team that will check each other’s work, check the translation with the language community, and perform the Translation Words and Translation Notes checks. After each review or checking session, these translators will be responsible to make the changes to the translation that are necessary so that it communicates what it should in the best way. So they will revise the translation many, many times.
Typists
If the translators themselves are not typing the translation draft into a computer or tablet, then someone else on the team must do this. This needs to be someone who can type without making a lot of errors. This person also needs to know how to use punctuation marks correctly and consistently. This person may also need to type the revisions and corrections to the translation after each round of checking.
Translation Testers
Some people need to test the translation with members of the language community to make sure that the translation is clear and sounds natural in the target language. Usually these are the translators, but they could be other people. These testers need to read the translation to people and then ask them questions to see how they are understanding it. For a description of this task, see Other Methods.
Accuracy Checkers
The people who are selected to check the translation for accuracy should be people who already know the Bible well in the source language. They should be able to read well in the source language. They will be comparing the translation to the source Bible, to make sure that the translation communicates everything that is in the source Bible. They should be people who are interested in the translation work and who have time to do a good job of checking. It is best for accuracy checkers to include members of the different church groups who speak the target language and who will use the translation.
Validation Checkers
Those who do Validation Checking should be leaders of groups of churches or people who are very widely respected in the language area. It is important that these people approve of the translation so that it will be accepted and used in the churches. Since many of these people are very busy, they may choose to appoint others whom they trust to check the translation for them. Also, it may work best to send different books or chapters to different people, and not burden one or two people with checking the whole translation.
Tech Support
These people must have experience (or aptitude) with technology and computers for all things pertaining to file management, as well as training and use of software and hardware.
Project Management
These people must have skills in organization, planning, and management of the translation team’s time, effort and workload.
Process Management
These people have skills in teaching, leading, and coaching in workshops, as well as ongoing assessment and improvement of team methodology and application of translation principles.
Mapping Skills to Roles
The combined skills that are needed in a Church-Centric Bible Translation team can be configured into a team of many different roles. The best composition of any given team cannot be prescribed in advance. It might even change over time, but the team must account for all the essential skills. We accomplish this as follows:
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We work with the leaders of the church networks to ensure that they understand the skills and functions needed on their translation team, as described in unfoldingWord® Translation Academy.
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We help them to identify an initial team composition based on the skills and contextual reality of their team (e.g., size of the team, theological ability, translation experience, language skill, geographic distribution, relationship dynamics, etc.). Their team may be small, with several skills being provided by the same person. Or the team may be large (in some cases as many as 25 full-time translators and hundreds of volunteers), with many people providing the same skill in an overlapping and intentionally redundant manner. Regardless of the structure and size of the team that is needed in a given context, the combined roles on any team must provide the combination of skills needed to achieve excellence in Bible translation.
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The team begins working together on an initial translation project (we recommend Open Bible Stories) and observes the effectiveness of their team’s configuration. As needed, adjustments to the team structure are made to improve efficiency, and training is provided to increase skill and effectiveness.