The Fosters

This was our first translation consultant check in what has been a very experimental Bible translation project! And because it was the kind of check that has been done for years on more traditional approaches to translation, I was a little nervous to say the least.

Mary Breeze,  SIL’s Africa Area Translation Coordinator/Consultant, and George Payton, SIL Uganda-Tanzania Branch Translation Consultant, spent two weeks in May doing what is called a 100 verse check on Luke 1&2 in 8 of the cluster project languages. It’s a common check done on new translation teams. The point of it is to make sure that the teams are not going off on some wild tangent but that they are indeed following good translation principles which produce translations that are accurate, clear, and natural.

For me, this ‘traditional’ check on a ‘non-traditional’ project was a little nerve-wracking. We’ve been breaking a lot of the normal translation practices, mostly by using computer software to quickly adapt a word-for-word pre-draft from a related language, so my main concern was that these seasoned consultants were going to tell us that all the work was rubbish and we need to scrap the whole approach. For months I had been looking forward to George and Mary’s visit as much as I look forward to my annual dental check-up.

Well, it’s all over now and I’m happy to tell you we won’t be getting any teeth pulled! The consultants were actually quite pleased with our work and have encouraged us to carry on. Of course, they found a number of typical beginner problems that we need to work on but overall, they said the translations were good and they spent some more time giving us excellent advice and training.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am after two-and-a-half years of investing myself, my family, my supporters, my colleagues…etc. in this new project to finally learn that it’s going to work. Awesome.