Originally blogged by Peter Brassington on Feb. 13, 2024 HERE
I recently realised that across the different bible apps on my phone I have access to over 30 different audio Bibles, read from different versions, in many different voices, and with or without a backing track, but I didn’t realise until yesterday that I had the entire New Testament sung by award winning Gospel artists to a piano accompaniment.
A group of Old Testament consultants are developing a series of aids to help translators prepare oral/performance and written translations of psalms that incorporate characteristics of local poetry and which will result in several products – both an exegetically-accurate written translation as well as a number of oral performances of the psalm or portions thereof.
For each psalm, there are four stages to the process, which moves from oral to written to performance. The hope is to capture the creativity of the translators through first preparing an oral translation and performance-excerpts, and then for this translation to be honed (to bring it closer to the Hebrew in terms of accuracy) after a careful study of the exegesis of the text.
(photo credit: esperanzatolentino.wordpress.com)
Which kind of translations make more impact?
This is a good question. It is also a complex issue and more than one set of parameters comes into play. That is, there’s more going on here than “literal vs meaning-based.” Long ago David Landin did research in Bolivia to see which indigenous Bibles were being used there 10 years after completion. Answer: the ones with the hymns in the back. And in those, it was the hymns that were being used, not the translations themselves.
One key factor that has proven true over the years is whether or not the local church leaders (pastors, evangelists, teachers) choose to use a new translation or not. If the local and regional church leaders do not show support for a translation, it will likely fade into obscurity. This is why nowadays many projects begin by contacting local and regional, even national church and denominational leadership in order to hear from them what kind of translation is most desired by them for their people. And continued conversation with these leaders is fostered all along the life of the translation project.