This section introduces church-owned Bible translation. It has the following topics:
Church-owned Bible translation (COBT) is a paradigm for Bible translation based on the following four beliefs about the local church and the Bible. We define "local church" as a community of believers who have the same heart language.
The six behaviors of church-owned Bible translation are:
Translating God's Word into your language to help your people grow as disciples of Jesus is an important task. You must be committed to this task, take your responsibility seriously, and pray that the Lord will help you.
God has spoken to us in the Bible. He inspired the writers of the Bible to write his Word using the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages. There were about 40 different authors writing from around 1400 B.C. to A.D. 100. These documents were written in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. By recording his Word in those languages, God ensured that the people at those times and in those places could understand it.
Today, people in your country do not understand Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. But translating God's Word into their language will enable them understand it!
Someone's "mother tongue" or "heart language" is the language they first spoke as a child and the one which they use at home. This is the language in which they are most comfortable and which they use to express their deepest thoughts. We want everyone to be able to read God's Word in their heart language.
Every language is important and valuable. Small languages are just as important as the national languages spoken in your country, and they can express meaning just as well. No one should be ashamed to speak his own dialect. Sometimes, those in minority groups feel ashamed of their language and try not to use it around the people who are in the majority in their nation. But there is nothing inherently more important, more prestigious, or more educated about the national language than the local languages. Each language has nuances and shades of meaning that are unique. We should use the language we are most comfortable with and with which we best communicate with others.
Our Statement of Faith consists of the following beliefs.
We consider essential beliefs to be those that define us as believers in Jesus Christ. These cannot be disregarded or compromised.
We believe:
All contributors to the Bible In Every Language website (see https://bibleineverylanguage.org) agree to translate the Bible in harmony with standard Christian doctrine as expressed in the Statement of Faith.
The divine familial terms are the words "Father" and "Son" when they refer to God the Father and God the Son. God is divine, and these terms show their family relationship to each other. Whenever the words "Father" and "Son" are used in the Bible to refer to the relationship between God the Father and God the Son (or between God the Father and Jesus Christ), they should be translated with the literal, ordinary words that people use to show the relationship between a man and his own son without qualification. That is, translators should not add words that imply that God is not really Jesus’ Father and that Jesus is not really God’s Son, such as “spiritual Father” and “spiritual Son." (See: Translating Son and Father and Son of God and God the Father.) All contributors to the Bible In Every Language website agree to do this.
The goal of the translation of biblical content is to produce a high-quality translation that is used and loved by the church. High-quality translations are accurate, clear, and natural (see Qualities of a Good Translation). But for a translation to be used and loved by the church, it must be church-affirmed. This means that the local church recognizes it to be the Word of God and desires to use it.
In order to produce a translation that the church affirms, as many church networks as possible should be contacted and encouraged to become a part of the translation project and 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. They should be involved in distributing the translation, reviewing it, and providing feedback so it can be refined. The more involved they are in these processes, the more likely they will affirm the translation.
If the church cannot actively lead the translation and coordinate all the efforts, it is necessary that whoever is leading the translation be affirmed by the church networks, preferably before they even start.
After the translators have checked the quality of their translation, they are encouraged to share it with the community and the church leaders so that they can review the translation and give feedback. Encouraging the community and as many church networks as possible to participate and give input will encourage them to own and affirm the translation. And if they do this, there should be nothing hindering the translation from being used to strengthen and encourage the church.
Bible translations that are collaborative are those that have been translated by a group of speakers of the same language. To ensure that your translation is of the highest quality, work together with other believers who speak your language to translate, check, and distribute the translated content.
Collaboration occurs in many ways during the translation process. First, as the team gathers from different churches and villages, they commit to collaborate on the project as a whole. Second, as translators on the team translate portions of scripture, they work with other translators on the team to check their translation and improve it. Third, the translators collaborate with community members and church leaders who read or listen to the scripture and provide feedback about how the translation can be improved.
Whenever possible the translation team should endeavor to include other Christians from their language group in the translation process, so as to continue and expand on the collaborative nature of the project.
Bible translations should be ongoing. That is, even after a Bible translation is published, the church and the translators should understand that the translation will need to be revised sometime in the future. There are various reasons a translation might need to be revised:
The language community may choose to continue to have a translation committee that is responsible for making any revisions. This committee could be made up of Bible translators, Bible scholars, church leaders, and others.
The church should encourage people to read the translation at home and in groups, and to tell a church leader or the translation committee if there appears to be a problem in the translation. The committee is then responsible for determining whether or not a change is needed and how to make it. The committee will need to decide which issues to deal with immediately and which ones to deal with at a later time.
The committee will continue to make corrections to the translation so that it will communicate the same meaning as the source text, and so that it will be more accurate, more clear, and more natural than it was before.
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Source texts may only be used if they have one of the following licenses:
See Copyrights, Licensing, and Source Texts for more information.
A gateway language (GL) is a language into which all our translation resources are being made available to help language communities translate scripture themselves.
Many people would not be able to use WA resources if they were only in English. So, WA has chosen certain national languages, languages of education, and trade languages to be gateway languages. Teams translate these resources into gateway languages so that bilingual translators can then translate the Bible from a gateway language into their own language.
Wycliffe Associates has a website with pages that provide information about Bible translation processes, along with Bible translation resources, tools, and links to support. The website is called Bible in Every Language and can be found at Bibleineverylanguage.org. It has the following pages.
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MAST stands for Moblizied Assistance Supporting Translation. This methodology was developed by a team of Bible scholars, teachers, educators and other believers to accelerate translation and promote local church ownership of translation projects. MAST emphasizes the necessity of mother tongue speakers as primary translators for a project, and provides for the training of those speakers in an eight-step translation process. The first four steps result in a draft of a passage of Scripture. The final four steps are checking steps to improve the quality of the draft. Teams of translators work together in parallel to draft and check first their own work and then each other's work. They also work in small groups to check keywords and content. Throughout the final four steps, translators are encouraged to use Bible translation tools and resources to affirm and improve their translations. (To learn more about the eight steps of the MAST process, see Discovering and Retelling the Meaning.)
MAST has greatly accelerated Bible translation around the world as hundreds of language communities have successfully leveraged this methodology to produce their own translations of Scripture. Its dependance on teamwork and local ownership are key factors in its success. The tools for translating and checking Scripture support the MAST process by promoting accelerated, accurate, and church-owned translations of the Bible.
Next we recommend you learn about Translation Theory and Practice.