Church-Owned Bible Translation

Introduction to Church-Owned Bible Translation

This section answers the following question: What are the topics that show how Wycliffe Associates promotes church-owned Bible translation?

This section introduces church-owned Bible translation. It has the following topics:


Church-Owned Bible Translation Defined

This section answers the following question: What is church-owned Bible translation?

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.

  1. The local church has the authority to translate the Bible into its own language. God’s Spirit resides in every believer. He provides wisdom and gives each believer authority to share, teach, or translate God’s Word according to the specific abilities and opportunities God has given him.
  2. The local church has the responsibility to translate the Bible into its own language. God gives local believers the responsibility to evangelize and disciple their community. Translating the scripture into the heart language of the people is an essential part of that responsibility.
  3. The local church with bilingual local believers has the ability to translate the Bible into their language. The local believers understand their language and culture better than an outsider, and typically, the local multilingual believers have skill in sharing meaning through oral translation.
  4. The local believers are accountable to one another and to God for translating the Scripture accurately and clearly in their heart language and for making it accessible to the community.

The six behaviors of church-owned Bible translation are:

  1. Mother-tongue speakers, in fellowship with their local church, take responsibility for translating the Bible into the heart language of their local community
  2. The local church manages community accessibility to the translated scripture.
  3. Continuing refinement and revision will take place within the community, with mother-tongue Christian speakers.
  4. The church engages the local community in Scripture usage.
  5. The local church shares the concept and methodology of church-owned Bible translation with other language communities.
  6. The local church takes ownership of generational revisions and updates to the Scripture.

Why We Translate the Bible

This section answers the following question: Why should we translate the Bible?

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.


Statement of Faith and Divine Familial Terms

This section answers the following question: What do we believe, and what are divine familial terms?

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:

  • The Bible is divinely inspired by God and has final authority.
  • God is one and exists in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
  • Because of the fall of man, all humans are sinful and in need of salvation.
  • The death of Christ is a substitute for sinners and provides for the cleansing of those who believe.
  • By God’s grace, through faith, man receives salvation as a free gift because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
  • The resurrection of all—the saved to eternal life and the lost to eternal punishment.

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.

Divine Familial Terms

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.


Church Affirmation

This section answers the following question: What is church affirmation?

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.


Collaboration

This section answers the following question: What are collaborative translations?

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.


Ongoing Translation

This section answers the following question: What is ongoing translation?

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:

  • There might be random errors.
  • There might be some words or phrases that are unclear or hard to understand.
  • Languages change over time. At some point, the community might not use certain words or ways of speaking that were used in the translation.
  • The church may decide that they want another translation with a different rubric, or standard.

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.


Open Copyright License

This section answers the following question: What freedoms do users have with unfoldingWord content?

The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) provides all the needed rights for translation and distribution of biblical content and ensures that the content remains open. Except where otherwise noted, all our content is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

The official license applied to the content on bibleineverylanguage.org is found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode. Below is a summary of that license.

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

You are free to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

for any purpose, even commercially.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following conditions:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Notices:

You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Suggested attribution statement for derivative works: "Original work created by the Door43 World Missions Community, available at http://door43.org/, and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ). This work has been changed from the original, and the original authors have not endorsed this work."

Attribution of Door43 Contributors

When importing a resource into Door43, the original work must be attributed as specified by the open license under which it is available.

Contributors to projects on bibleineverylanguage.org agree that the attribution that occurs automatically in the revision history of every page is sufficient attribution for their work. That is, every contributor on bibleineverylanguage.org may be listed as "the bibleineverylanguage.org World Missions Community" or something to that effect.

Source Texts

Source texts may only be used if they have one of the following licenses:

See Copyrights, Licensing, and Source Texts for more information.


Gateway Languages

This section answers the following question: How can every language be reached?

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.


WA Bible Translation Tools and Resources

This section answers the following question: What Bible tranlation tools and resources does Wycliffe Associates provide?

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.

  • Processes tells about MAST (a methodology for translation), DOT (a methodology for translation into sign languages), SUN (a writing system for deaf people who neither read nor sign), and REV (a program for revising translations).
  • Resources tells about the Unlocked Literal Bible, Open Bible Stories, and resources that give information to help people translate and check their translations.
  • Tools presents computer programs for Bible translation.
  • Translations has links to the translation resources in English and in other languages as they are translated and uploaded to the website.
  • Support provides points of contact for support with technical issues and translation.

Connect to tech support with an email to [email protected] for help with your questions.


MAST Bible Translation Process

This section answers the following question: What is MAST and what is it for?

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.