I recently found a website for a church where the pastor had a blog. He raised some questions about the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He was questioning how translators could really know that the translation was correct in the language. I was surprised by the statements he made because if he had done even a small amount of research he could have found very good answers to his questions. Right now I'm in the midst of checking some chapters of Joshua for a colleague in Papua New Guinea. So I thought this would be a good time to talk about Wycliffe's "quality control".
Believe it or not, before any Scripture is published it has to be checked. We don't just do a minor little read through either. Normally, when any book is completed in a first draft form, the translators will then check with native speakers who have not worked on it. When I do this in the village, I round up some men and women who did not work on the translation. We then begin reading the book paragraph by paragraph. I have them read a little then I ask them to close their books and tell me what they remember. This tells me if the text is coherent. If they can remember things in the right order and can recall minor details, there is a good chance it is well written. If, on the other hand, they are unable to come up with details and seem to be confused on the order of events, there is most likely something that is not translated quite right.
I will ask questions about each verse as to who is doing what, when, where, and why. The answers that come back are very helpful and we make changes based on what is not understood properly. I ask questions about words that we have used to make sure they mean what the translators told me they did.
Once that phase is done, I translate the whole thing back into English. As I do I am constantly checking it again to see if we left something out.
When I have translated back into English this copy is given to a translation consultant. He will check this against the Greek or Hebrew. His goal is make sure we didn't leave something out. If he finds things that may be questionable exegetically or theologically, he may challenge me on it. He goes through it very carefully writing out questions. Then we meet together with a native speaker of the language. He will ask the questions and I will translate them into Gumawana. The native speaker will be someone who has not worked on this book in any way before this point. His answers will usually show whether or not it is clear. By having another set of eyes look over the text, we are able to find any problem areas.
Only after all this checking is done, can we publish. I am a translation consultant as well and it is possible to read through the English back-translation and find errors. The questioning time does work to find most if not all problems. In fact, I would say that our translations are tested far more than any English translation is. Furthermore, we don't use the same consultant for all the books we translate. For Gumawana we have already had 6 different consultants check it. And in checking the gospels, we really get it checked four times. Even though Mark may be done, when a different consultant checks Matthew he may find things that were missed on Mark. So changes are made to both. As far as I can see it is one of the best systems for quality control.
Responding to this pastor's query about being able to understand what the native speaker knows about the translation, I can say that the majority of translators in Wycliffe have learned the language they are working in very, very well so that they can understand how the native speakers are going to take a certain passage. When we are translating we do so in Gumawana. We do rarely use English. So when I am looking for an important term in the language, I explain it all in Gumawana. After 25 years working in the language, my fluency is quite high as is the case for most translators.
Hopefully, this will clear up questions you might have about how we maintain quality control.
Believe it or not, before any Scripture is published it has to be checked. We don't just do a minor little read through either. Normally, when any book is completed in a first draft form, the translators will then check with native speakers who have not worked on it. When I do this in the village, I round up some men and women who did not work on the translation. We then begin reading the book paragraph by paragraph. I have them read a little then I ask them to close their books and tell me what they remember. This tells me if the text is coherent. If they can remember things in the right order and can recall minor details, there is a good chance it is well written. If, on the other hand, they are unable to come up with details and seem to be confused on the order of events, there is most likely something that is not translated quite right.
I will ask questions about each verse as to who is doing what, when, where, and why. The answers that come back are very helpful and we make changes based on what is not understood properly. I ask questions about words that we have used to make sure they mean what the translators told me they did.
Once that phase is done, I translate the whole thing back into English. As I do I am constantly checking it again to see if we left something out.
When I have translated back into English this copy is given to a translation consultant. He will check this against the Greek or Hebrew. His goal is make sure we didn't leave something out. If he finds things that may be questionable exegetically or theologically, he may challenge me on it. He goes through it very carefully writing out questions. Then we meet together with a native speaker of the language. He will ask the questions and I will translate them into Gumawana. The native speaker will be someone who has not worked on this book in any way before this point. His answers will usually show whether or not it is clear. By having another set of eyes look over the text, we are able to find any problem areas.
Only after all this checking is done, can we publish. I am a translation consultant as well and it is possible to read through the English back-translation and find errors. The questioning time does work to find most if not all problems. In fact, I would say that our translations are tested far more than any English translation is. Furthermore, we don't use the same consultant for all the books we translate. For Gumawana we have already had 6 different consultants check it. And in checking the gospels, we really get it checked four times. Even though Mark may be done, when a different consultant checks Matthew he may find things that were missed on Mark. So changes are made to both. As far as I can see it is one of the best systems for quality control.
Responding to this pastor's query about being able to understand what the native speaker knows about the translation, I can say that the majority of translators in Wycliffe have learned the language they are working in very, very well so that they can understand how the native speakers are going to take a certain passage. When we are translating we do so in Gumawana. We do rarely use English. So when I am looking for an important term in the language, I explain it all in Gumawana. After 25 years working in the language, my fluency is quite high as is the case for most translators.
Hopefully, this will clear up questions you might have about how we maintain quality control.
