Skip to main content

Please Don't Work in Silos!

It seems that the more we specialise, the more we siloise (no pun intended). Siloisation is, according to Wikipedia, "The splitting of personnel, data, etc. into isolated units with poor communication."

One danger of siloisation is that we are only interested in our own field of work or research. "I'm a linguist", or "I'm a literacy specialist" becomes an excuse for ignoring other areas of work, all of which are important.

Another danger is poor communication between the various fields of work. We don't have time to attend all the Communities of Practice, or read all the emails in all of the email groups, so we just pick our own field of interest, without interacting with related fields.

Yet another problem is those who want to subsume all other fields under their own. "It's all education!" Or, "It's all language development!"

Finally, we may over-simplify other areas of work. "Scripture engagement is about getting people to read Bibles that linguists have spent 20 years translating" (a huge over-simplification).

So, how do these various areas relate to one another? How does linguistics relate to literacy and literacy to Scripture engagement and linguistics to Scripture engagement etc. etc.? How does anthropology fit in? What about arts? 

One way of answering this is by asking how another department can help yours. For instance arts people can help Scripture engagement (SE) workers by training local artists to use their creativity for the Kingdom. Scripture engagement workers can help linguists by building relationships with churches and with ordinary believers so that the translation is more relevant to its intended audience, and ends up getting used (engaged with). They can also advise the team on what products are needed to meet the felt needs of the audience. Literacy and SE specialists can work together to produce health booklets on e.g. the dangers of AIDS or substance abuse. When trauma healing workers make booklets the literacy workers can advise which languages to use (or not use). In addition orality specialists can train trauma healing trainers in how to lead the course orally. Linguists can help SE workers understand what goes on under the bonnet, so to speak i.e. how translation works, what the difficulties are, and why certain key terms were chosen in the local language. This will help SE people to understand the importance of using accepted key terms (accepted by the local community). Anthropologists can help everyone understand the significance of a patrilineal group, or why polygyny is one of their practices. 

Without this cross-fertilisation we are stuck in a very long, and potentially very tedious rut. Even if it isn't tedious, because we love our work, we sometimes need help to get out of that rut because it isn't helping local people make progress. So siloisation is a problem, but if we are open to working together well as a team, things can work out well!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Asset Based Bible Translation (ABBT)

Many of you will have heard of asset-based community development (ABCD). How can Bible translation programmes be asset based, rather than deficit based? The best way to look at this is a comparison table: Deficit based Asset based Driven by outsiders Driven by the community Outside funding Community funded Done to meet a need Done to help the community grow Quality control done by a consultant Community checked and approved Control from outside-in Lead by stepping back Products not accepted? Products are accepted Little engagement Engagement with products Scientific Organic Not sustainable Sustainable Of course many translation programmes these days are neither one nor t'other, they are somewhere between these two extremes. Nevertheless, this illustrates a point, and shows that the current
Post a Comment
Read more

A Flow Chart for Bible Translation (a Relevance Theory Approach)

One of the current theories behind modern translation work is Relevance Theory. [1] Here is a flow chart that explains the process often used to produce a draft when using such an approach: *Make sure your translation committee makes the decision as to what kind of translation they want. A domesticated translation is one that submits to dominant values in the target language [2] whereas a foreignized translation is one that is happy to import foreign terms and ideas from Hebrew, Greek, or the language of wider communication such as the Greek term baptizo . The chart looks something like this: Text                                   Communicated Ideas                  Context A sower went out to sow  A farmer went out to sow grain   People scattered/threw seed etc. The text has very little information, but behind it is the idea that seed was scatted by throwing it from a bag carried round the farmer's shoulder. This could be explained in the para-
Post a Comment
Read more

Asking the Right Questions in Bible Translation and Scripture Engagement Planning

If you want to get useful answers you have to ask the right questions. Do you agree? Yes, of course you do. In the Bible translation world we often ask a very narrow question when planning for the next stage of work: 'What would you like to see translated next?' Now, if you simply want to translate, and that's it, that question is fine, but what if you want to see some kind of result from your translation work? What if, for instance, you want to see transformation occur? Then a more powerful question to ask the community and positive stakeholders in the project would be: 'What kingdom goals would you like to see reached?' These kingdom goals should meet felt needs of the community - they should solve problems that are apparent to most or all in the community. See below on how those can be met. If that's too abstract, then try, 'What kinds of things, in your extended family, do you tend to worry about?' This will help establish some felt needs, from which
7 comments
Read more