A History of Bible Translation: Chapter 7 - Post-Colonial Translation and Globalisation; Bible Storying

The decision to move to a more open model of work wasn’t just taken for pragmatic reasons. Missions in general have been realising that we need to move away from colonial approaches, where the foreigners are in control, and away from post-colonial approaches, where the foreigners feel guilty that they are even involved in the work. In these days of globalisation, we can all be involved without anyone feeling guilty or misused in any way. Post-colonial approaches have affected many areas of academic study, including translation. We now realise that languages can be used to adversely influence people (colonialism), and that translators are more than linguists, they are cross-cultural intermediaries (post-colonial approaches and globalisation). For instance, if an interpreter hears something that they consider might be insulting to those they are interpreting for, they might modify what they say and tone it down a bit to make it more acceptable. On top of that we know that the cultures we come from tend to share a body of information, and this might be different in the host culture. Therefore translators naturally make up for these differences by sharing background information in one way or another. In the Bible there are many situations where the narrator supplies two names for a place – perhaps the Aramaic (or Hebrew) and the Greek name, or the old name and the current name (as it was in the narrator’s day). This is so readers can gain background information. Other ways of providing such information is by using maps, pictures, glossaries, footnotes, introductions etc. These are known as the para-text or para-textual helps. New translators are tempted to skip these means of conveying information, but as time goes on they realise the importance of them. In some contexts it might be that the audience need training in how to use such helps. If the translation is mainly for audio only the team need to be very creative in how they are supplied.

The decisions made by a translation team as they go along will often refer back to a project brief that they have agreed with positive stakeholders (i.e. partners) and those in the translation committee. That document should carefully define the audience(s) and the skopos of translation. Roughly translated this means ‘function’ or ‘purpose’. Without a clear idea of the intended audience(s) and the skopos it is quite hard to make good and consistent decisions about translation issues. This project brief also needs input from a Scripture Engagement consultant, who will advise the team, partners and committee on how best to reach the goal of the translated and distributed Scriptures transforming lives. This consultant might refer to Wayne Dye’s Eight Conditions or to the barriers to Scripture Engagement mentioned in Harriet Hill and Margaret Hill’s Translating the Bible into Action.

In the nineties and early two-thousands a mission agency called ‘New Tribes Mission’ realised that it is far more effective to ‘story’ the Bible than to try and teach it in a traditional (to us, i.e. Western, top-down, analytical) way. They started to act it out and this gave birth to a new movement called ‘Bible storying’ which has been very effective in some parts of the world. Many Mission and Bible translation agencies are now involved in Bible storying, and it has resulted in much church growth. Those trained in storying seek to start Bible-storying fellowships, and pass on the stories they have crafted. These then multiply exponentially. The huge advantage is that a) little training is needed b) the story sets can be developed and passed on relatively quickly. That’s not to say that this approach replaces traditional approaches to Bible translation, but it certainly guarantees greater Scripture engagement – lives are transformed and people learn what it is to walk as a believer, without any need for literacy classes, long-term linguistic research, and so on.