BT Conference Presentation - Stringer

by Stephen Stringer·65 views·Updated Sep 29, 2023

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Hello,
my name is Stephen Stringer and I'm happy to be presenting this paper to you today.
Orality in scripture, internalization, broadening involvement
in Bible translation.
One of the challenges of translation,
particularly translation within cultures with
a high reliance on orality
is providing the extra
resources and monical skills necessary for
oral translators. So to meet that challenge,
we propose an embodied approach to internalization.
And in this
approach, an interpretive community engages with a periscope of scripture
to hear, discuss, perform and express the scripture's discourse as well as its
canonical cultural and theological
context.
So during this presentation, we'll walk you through
the theoretical underpinnings of the approach.
Describe the approach itself, present our initial testing of the approach
and finally
predict the potential benefits and challenges of this approach.
So the ever present goal of Bible translation is to create
good high quality Bible translations and
whether you use can or Tua acronyms to describe
quality and translation.
There's another question we need to consider
who is best equipped to create
high quality translation.
I think it's almost a truism now that
we recognize that
the most capable translators are people who come
from within the local community,
the local language in which
the Bible is being translated.
And as we consider how to broaden involvement in Bible
translation to include more and more people from local communities.
We
have to consider what are the things that they need
to be best placed
to translate the Bible?
They're, they're best equipped to decide on words and phrases and,
and, and understanding culture.
But there are some challenges
to
equipping
translators from within a local community,
perhaps who have a high reliance on orality.
So
there are two parts to the challenge.
And
the greatest challenge is simply lack
of resources, exegetical resources that would
uh
equip and empower translators to make correct translation
decisions. It's particularly
among
oral
translators.
Uh many times. Uh This information
rests in the hands in the minds
of translation consultants who overwhelmingly tend to be
outsiders. Uh These
consultants are the ones who have consistent access to
information
uh whether that be commentaries or software.
Um
those are difficult to access in places where there
is not consistent internet. And
even
many of those who do have access to such resources or could access those resources,
uh those resources uh are made for highly literate, educated
academics.
Uh Furthermore, I'm sure many of you are aware, they're simply
uh
aren't enough consultants who have that kind of
access and can share that with others.
So as we began thinking what to do oral Bible translation
is a good next step. Trying to break down some barriers of traditional
Bible translation.
Uh
But it didn't completely break down
these barriers
because it still has this gap of providing the translation team
with robust exegetical resources.
Most
O BT processes contain an internalization process.
Uh But
many like the kind of robust
genal information
um
wedded to such a process and this is
what we've tried
to accomplish.
So
our
proposed solution is to wed both the process
with the information
and uh
equip and give access to this to
the local translation team.
If they have the
information in an oral, easily accessible format,
these communities can use those materials to
empower a wider range of respected knowledgeable community members
to participate in Bible translation. This does several things.
It enables more people to become involved in Bible translation. By
breaking down knowledge barriers. It also increases the quality of translations
both by inviting people with deep knowledge of their own language and culture
and by providing teens with the information,
they need to make good translation decisions
from the very beginning of the process.
And finally, it advised local oral theologians into the process but simply
oral out loud information, perhaps a resource that's been recorded
isn't enough. These transition teams should be able to access the
exotic
information
at the right time from the very beginning
in a process that is also highly oral, oral communities
don't separate content from process.
Therefore, extra
information should be fully embedded in the translation process.
We move from big overarching concepts, the meta narrative,
uh those sort of informations uh high level discourse to
word choice, word level
translation decisions.
In 2022 our organization srv
was approached by E tens in innovations lab to help them create such material.
And uh we call our process the process
fi A
which stands for Familiarization, internalization and articulation.
It's designed to help translation teams internalize
the meaning of the periphery of scripture
and understand the
context of that Peric
Bee.
But before we go into the process in detail, um
I'll describe a little bit of the
sort of foundational oral principles behind
oh
the process, how we built the process.
So the first things first, it's important to
understand orality
uh has many definitions and
uh there's no one
monolithic
oral culture.
Uh orality is probably best described as multiple orality.
Uh People have oral tendencies in different
uh registers of language, different aspects of their life,
perhaps in one language, they're highly
uh text based in another language, they're highly oral.
Uh There are some general tendencies and characteristics
of orality that we do pay attention to. And so
as we view orality as a constellation
of characteristics, and we focused um
in our process, we co focused on cognitive
characteristics of orality.
Um
I'd like to just highlight three of those characteristics
that we find key to how oral people learn.
Uh These were particularly important in how we went about building
our internalization process.
So
these three aspects are embodied epistemology, communal symbiotic and
narrative rationality.
Uh I won't go into too much detail on each of these
uh three characteristics. But
uh basically, when we talk about embodied
epistemology,
uh
knowledge, uh
knowing what you know and learning comes from full bodied multi
sensory experiential learning.
And when we talk about communal semiotics that meaning making and interpretation
uh happens within community in relationship with one another.
Uh We focus on discussion and groups of people
uh interpreting meaning.
And then we discuss narrative rationality
uh instead of thinking in terms of abstract, conceptual,
um
there is a
orality and oral characteristics, oral cognition.
Uh He's
concepts quite well. They just
happens
to use uh different forms of rationality and
probably the
one most well known and probably the one the most prevalent
would be what we'd call narrative rationality that
uh concepts are uh are understood within a story, within a narrative.
Um
So people make sense of ideas and thoughts
uh through placing it within
a story line, either within their own life or a story
that they know.
So
as we talk about the
process,
these characteristics underline
uh
each part of the process. So,
uh in
again, we talked about Familiarization, internalization, articulation.
Um
Each translation team should become familiar with
the
exotic information.
They need to understand the overarching
biblical geographic literary cultural chronological significance
of a perp
of scripture.
And then we want the teams to internalize the scripture itself, the periphery,
understanding the
scenes, the setting, the characters, the actions,
causality, emotions.
Uh This helps the teams identify and absorb the meaning
of a prick
of scripture. And finally, we want the team to begin
articulating specific
choices, translation choices regarding words and phrases within
the perp
practically, the fear process
looks like a series of six steps that a translation team walks through together.
These steps are provided in
an audio format
along with supplementary pictures, videos and maps.
Uh The translation teams can access and utilize these steps and materials,
however, works best for their process.
Uh In the case of deaf translation, uh There are video translations of the process
and each
audio video has a script that goes with it.
So we have an international team of over 40 people from seven countries
developing these resources for each
via step
and each step including the exo
material within it and the media attached to it
is checked by a uh
recognized Bible translation consultant.
So what are the six steps
in Familiarization, internalization and articulation?
The six steps are
we, there's nothing magical about the titles but
uh
we've entitled them here in heart
setting, the stage,
defining the scenes,
embodying the text,
filling the gaps
and speaking or signing
the word.
So the first step
here in heart
familiarizes a translation team with the Perp
of scripture and the team
listens to the
perp
in different translations,
preferably in one or more languages of water communication. So
uh they listen multiple times, they discuss the passion passage with
uh several open ended
questions.
And then
in setting the stage, the second step,
the team familiarizes themselves with the context of that per
of scripture. And
it places the per
within the wider scriptural meta narrative.
It provides the team with information about the
cultural linguistic historical geographical context
of that per
and then when we move to the third step, the third step is called defining the scenes,
it frames the periscope,
it describes the scenes, the setting, the characters.
Uh And this is the case, whether we're talking about a narrative
piece of scripture or a non narrative piece of scripture.
Uh This step describes the
discourse features in the
peri and emphasizes the flow of thought
action
narrative or logic or the argument
of
this piece of scripture. And,
and it's at this point that the team
attempts to visualize
the periscope using
uh manipulatives or drawing or, or
storyboard,
uh whatever they might
choose to do, which is helpful to them.
The fourth step is
called embodying the tax. It, it really is literally about
placing your body into
the peri copy of scripture and it helps the team
identify the actions, the emotions, the
the causal relationships within the periphery. And here the team
acts out the story and
discusses the emotions and the the causation that are at play in the story.
In the fifth step, filling the gap,
the team
begins to fill in remaining gaps in their knowledge. So contextual gaps for them,
they examine key biblical terms and concepts in the periphery.
And at this point, they begin discussing how they might best
translate those concepts.
And then
that flows into the six
and most recent step.
Uh We've added this step uh along the way
uh that we call speaking the word or
uh sharing the word or signing the word.
In this step. The team practices
uh articulating this per
and,
and here they begin making decisions on how best to translate the Perco
and prepare it
uh as the beginnings of drafting their translation.
This helps the team solidify
uh
their understanding
of the perp of
scripture.
So the question would be so how has it worked so far?
Uh We're currently using these materials
uh
intentionally
and multiple projects, the battle team in Papua New Guinea.
Um So the
translation team there,
um I'm currently in Central Asia
working with uh multiple
deaf translation teams who are using
uh the materials
to great effect.
Uh
Then the United Church in Papua,
New Guinea is also using these materials in their translation
efforts as well as a colloquial
Hindi
translation project.
We believe that in order to make
sure we serve oral communities, well, we
must continually receive feedback from the oral translation teams and
we've been able to get uh
some good feedback from the pro
projects in Papua, New Guinea.
Um We are receiving good feedback currently from the deaf teams
uh
was actually because of these projects that uh
global partners in E 10
reached out to us to begin creating these
oral exo
resources. So
we've had opportunities to test the materials um in action as we've begun
and we've made adjustments
along the way. We've had different interviews with the teams and
um
a little over a year, we've made some significant
changes and significant
advances. We think it's obviously too early for us to
evaluate
whether these materials do
uh produce
high quality Bible translations. But we are
seeing some,
some significant
feedback.
Um
Many of the teams felt that uh the
the materials really
increase their understanding of the context,
understanding of scripture itself, they internalize it.
Um
Encouragingly,
the teens consistently told us that the material
and the larger process that it was embedded in
allowed the teens to engage with scripture scripture
on a deeper level than they had ever
engaged before.
When the church leaders in the United Church in Papua New Guinea
were asked whether they'd be finished with their Bible translation
when they would be finished with their Bible translations and satisfied
uh
with their product. They told us that they don't ever plan to finish.
Instead, they told us that
they saw every process of the translation teams deeply engaging with scripture,
transform those teams and,
and, and the churches that they're part of and,
and the communities, the teams were a part of. So they,
they envision continually revising and continually
um
developing
as they translate scripture in their own language.
So going forward,
we, we do plan to
continue to establish feedback loops and,
and um
as more projects begin to use the material in translation,
uh we will continue to get better and based on the feedback
uh from translation teams, we've realized that
uh since oral communities don't separate process from content,
uh we need to ensure that these materials and the, the,
the
steps are also
accompanied by descriptions of what we would consider best practices. So,
uh we're in the process of testing, training
uh opportunities that would accompany the materials um
including a training Bible translation training
as a resource as well.
So
what does the future look like?
Well, on the part of SRV, we plan to complete the materials uh for the entire Bible.
Um
Our plan is to do so in the next four years. And
currently, we've, we have scripts for the five, for five books of the Bible um
for the four gospels and, and Genesis,
we've gathered media
which is very difficult to do as all of our media has to be completely open source
and available.
Uh We've, we've had to capture a lot of the media
on our own. So we really only have media for one book, the book of Mark.
Uh so far, of course, we'll
also
continue to test and refine the fia materials uh because
fia seeks to support translators in primary oral communities.
Um We plan to build iterative process in our content
development that seeks and prioritizes feedback from oral communities.
But on a wider scale,
our hope for the future
is that barriers between
translators
and
ICAL materials keep breaking down. We invite
everyone listening
to continue developing materials,
particularly designed for oral peoples. And our, our
hope is for the
entire Bible translation world,
including everyone at this conference, everyone who's online
to continue to break down those barriers so that any translator from any community
can have access to exigent
materials in a format
they best understand
from the very beginning of the translation process.
Thank you so much for your time.