A New Translation Method Gets Bible Translated in 2 Months

An organization in Asia has announced that they were able to translate the bible in two months.

Wycliffe Associates (WA), a smaller organization of Wycliffe Bible Translators, said that a team in
Asia was able to translate almost half of the New Testaments in just two weeks.

“That part is the most difficult for people to believe,” said WA president Bruce Smith.
The announcement came after a minority group in Asia asked WA to help translate the bible for them.

To speed up the process, WA worked simultaneously on translating instead of working sequentially and the group also didn’t do any training on translation principles, such as proper names and key terms.

Thirteen translators worked on the project. They were divided into teams and each team worked on one of the four Gospels. The translators worked 12-hour days and reportedly translated about 34 verses per day.

Smith said he knew it was an “understandably absurd approach,” but the translator had “knowledge of their language and languages of the source text.”
"This is not the end of the story for either the [group of 13 translators] or for the parallel translation strategy,” Smith said. “We have a rapidly expanding number of partners and languages who want to test this strategy as soon as is practical.

"The great news about this is that it will not only increase the number of languages that have Bible translation in progress, but it will also significantly expand the team of trained facilitators-meaning that even more languages can benefit in the years to come."

By Amanda Casanova