A History of Bible Translation: Chapter 6 - The Development of the Modern Missions Movement and Modern Bible Translation

The major push that occurred in the 19^th century resulted in mission work and Bible translation beginning in many fairly major languages, but it was not until the 20^th century that smaller groups and minority languages were considered a need. It has only been in the last one hundred years ago that phrases like ‘every tribe, every nation, every language’ were used to call workers and others into mission work and partnership in it.

Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, actually began in the 1930s by starting a training programme called ‘The Summer Institute of Linguistics’, to equip those already studying linguistics at university to analyse an unwritten language from first principles. The early recruits went to Mexico, where they researched and analysed the indigenous languages such as Nahuatl and Mixtec. They lived in villages, worked with ‘language informants’, as they were then known, and produced phonology write-ups, grammars, dictionaries, primers for the orthography (alphabet) they had developed, and also began translating the New Testament into those languages. This was carried out with the permission of the government: SIL worked with mainly governments and universities at that time. Back at home, however, Townsend found that churches were uninterested in ‘all that linguistic stuff’ and he began a second organisation, Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The work has gone through several paradigm shifts since the early days, and I will try and summarise them here:

1. The first shift was to working with mother-tongue translators, rather than language informants. These translators were encouraged to write up the translation themselves, and either type it up or keyboard it into a computer. They worked alongside the SIL members as equals, rather than subordinates. The community were encouraged to form a language or translation committee, to make decisions about the choice of mother-tongue translators, choice of key terms, layout of the portions published, and so on. In addition, Eugene Nida’s ‘Dynamic Equivalence’ model[1] was used to produce meaning-based translations.
2. The next shift was start up more and more local organisations, led by local people, that would eventually take over the leadership of the work. There was more of an emphasis on training, but this was mainly carried out in partnership with local universities. SIL also began to train local exegetes to advise translators and local consultants to visit the projects.
3. The most recent shift has been for SIL to become a service organisation. This has led to SIL working with many partners: local churches, other mission organisations, other Bible translation agencies, amongst others. In some parts of the world foreigners don’t even join SIL but remain part of their home Wycliffe organisation, and simply partner with a local organisation. In other parts of the world SIL continues to play a role, but in a much more flexible way. The aim is for programmes to be initiated and owned local, with some input from SIL or Wycliffe members as and when needed. Many translators work independently, carrying out their own exegetical research before making a draft. There are many expatriate consultants based in their home countries, making trips all over the world to consult for projects. They give input, but don’t have the final say in what goes on in the locally-owned programmes. There is also more of a two-way interaction – the SIL consultants are learning as well as teaching. No one person knows all the information needed.

The Bible Societies have gone through similar paradigm shifts, with most of their consultants now being based in a local Bible Society and working with projects there. There are also roving trainers, who support such consultants and others involved in the work.

Let us not forget, however, that Bible translation is often carried out by local believers, church-planters and others, who see the need, get stuck in, then realise they need some help and training. In fact that’s the norm, these days. One advantage of SIL and other Bible translation agencies taking more of a back seat (without doing less work, you realise), is that the work can progress much more quickly. In the mid to late nineties SIL realised that at the current rate of progress the work would take a century or more to complete (not that the work is every completed, in one sense). Taking that long was felt to be unacceptable, and we realised we had to open it up to other groups and individuals. 

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[1] Nida developed this model, also known as the ‘Code Model’, in the 1960s. He started out as a member of SIL, then worked for the UBS.