This section introduces Church Owned Bible Translation. It has the following modules:
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" means 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.
We consider Essential beliefs to be those that define us as believers in Jesus Christ. These cannot be disregarded or compromised.
We believe:
Peripheral beliefs are those beliefs based on Scripture where sincere believers may have disagreements in their interpretation. These include areas such as modes of baptism, the rapture, second coming of Christ, the Lord’s Supper and church practices. On peripheral beliefs, we can agreeably accept differences.
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.
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. (See: Translating Son and Father and Son of God and God the Father.) All contributors to the Bible In Every Language website (see https://bibleineverylanguage.org) agree to do this.
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 translation team has 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.
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 individuals on the team translate portions of scripture, they work with other team members to check their translation and improve it. Third, the team collaborates 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.
Bible translations should be ongoing. Share the translation with others to see if they understand the meaning of the message. Improve your translation with their input. Revising a translation to increase understanding and accuracy is always a good idea. Whenever someone has a good idea for making the translation better, you should edit the translation to incorporate that change. When you use BTT Writer or other electronic text editors, you can keep this process of revision and improvement ongoing.
Remember, encourage people to review the translation and to give you ideas for making it better. Talk to other people about these ideas. When several people agree that these are good ideas, then make these changes in the translation. In this way, the translation will get better and better.
To achieve unrestricted biblical content in every language, a license is needed that gives the global Church "unrestricted" access. We believe this movement will become unstoppable when the Church has unrestricted access. 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.
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The Gateway Languages Strategy endeavors to equip all people groups with access to the Bible, biblical content, translation training, and translation resources in a language that bilingual people in those groups understand well. Those bilingual people can then translate the Bible and biblical content into a language they understand fully, that is, their own language.
A Gateway Language (GL) is a language of wider communication into which all our translation tools and resources will be made available. Bilingual speakers use Gateway Language resources to help them translate the Bible into their own heart language.
Many Gateway Languages are national languages, languages of education, or trade languages within a country. Just as countries vary in their number of national or recognized languages, many will have more than one Gateway Language. India, for example, has several Gateway Languages, while Mozambique has only one. In addition, some Gateway Languages are used in multiple countries or even on multiple continents. For example, Portuguese is a Gateway Language from which bilingual speakers in Brazil and in several countries in Africa can translate the Bible into their heart language.
The Gateway Languages Strategy prioritizes developing content and making it available in these diverse languages of the world. This provides tools to empower minority language communities to translate scripture themselves.
Wycliffe Associates has a website that provides 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.
Connect to tech support with an email to [email protected] for help with your questions.
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.
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.