community checking translation
Another one of the very important steps of the translation process is community checking. After the first draft, the editing, and the team/advisor checking stages the trial text is taken to the people.
In doing and checking translation, we are consistently looking for the text to be three things: clear, accurate, and natural. To easily remember those, you can shorten them to CAN. For clarity -- we're looking to see that the translation doesn't invoke wrong meaning or no meaning when read or heard. For accuracy -- we're looking to see that the translation is consistent with the original (Greek in this case). For naturalness -- we're looking to see that the translation sounds like the receptor language not English or Tok Pisin or Greek. The different stages of checking look for different things.
Community checking looks for naturalness and clarity. Ideally, community checking involves a group of people who haven't been involved in the translation at any stage who are made up of a variety of demographics who all contribute to the feedback. Sometimes, the checking happens in more than one place to gather input from people throughout the languag area and not simply those in one location.
A lot of other things can happen in community checking. This is a terrific opportunity to spread awareness of the translation work and whet the appetite for mor. It's a good time to trial out changes in orthography (or the writing system) in languages that are predominantly unwritten. It's a time that can promote literacy as people practice reading or hearing another read the text. It can also be used to promote scripture use and engagement -- training people how to use and understand the scripture.
This week we gathered for our current workshop as a part of the Islands Luke Partnership. Yesterday, when the Tigak translators and I met to go over what had been done since we met as a team in July, I was very pleased to see that two of them had been able to do community checks for Luke 4-5 in their individual villages. The groups were made up of people old and young, male and female, which is always a plus and there was good feedback from both checking sessions.
One of the translators took some time before he began the community checking session to go over some orthography changes and notes with those participating to get their response. We have two a's: 'a' and 'aa' and in the last year, the decision was made to add an 'x' to the alphabet to represent the variations of the velar/uvular fricatives so now we use 'k' and 'x' rather than only 'k'. It was encouraging to hear that the participants at that community checking session were pleased with the changes and thought them beneficial. If the orthography isn't easily used, people simply won't use it.
After the community checks are done, especially if more than one was done for a section of the text as happened in our case, we need to incorporate those edits into the text while making sure we do not alter the accuracy of the text. So for each edit, we look at it, talk about it, and then decide is it a good change or is there some other way we can change the text to reflect the input while keeping the accuracy.
It's not a quick process. Hopefully as time goes on and the team grows and develops in their experience it can go a bit faster, but for now we're trying to keep our focus on how much we want the text to be clear, accurate, and natural and not just on how long each step of the process takes to complete. Honestly, I'm the one who struggles the most with the time, that's part of my western cultural identity coming out.
I have to keep remembering that this is the first book this team is translating and as such, we still have a lot to learn at every step of the journey. Can we also just stop and mention again how important prayer is to this work? It's vital. Our prayers, your prayers, the prayers of the communities of the translators. They are all so important to the process.
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| We're discussing the comments and input from the two community checks that happened in August/September. |
In doing and checking translation, we are consistently looking for the text to be three things: clear, accurate, and natural. To easily remember those, you can shorten them to CAN. For clarity -- we're looking to see that the translation doesn't invoke wrong meaning or no meaning when read or heard. For accuracy -- we're looking to see that the translation is consistent with the original (Greek in this case). For naturalness -- we're looking to see that the translation sounds like the receptor language not English or Tok Pisin or Greek. The different stages of checking look for different things.
Community checking looks for naturalness and clarity. Ideally, community checking involves a group of people who haven't been involved in the translation at any stage who are made up of a variety of demographics who all contribute to the feedback. Sometimes, the checking happens in more than one place to gather input from people throughout the languag area and not simply those in one location.
A lot of other things can happen in community checking. This is a terrific opportunity to spread awareness of the translation work and whet the appetite for mor. It's a good time to trial out changes in orthography (or the writing system) in languages that are predominantly unwritten. It's a time that can promote literacy as people practice reading or hearing another read the text. It can also be used to promote scripture use and engagement -- training people how to use and understand the scripture.
This week we gathered for our current workshop as a part of the Islands Luke Partnership. Yesterday, when the Tigak translators and I met to go over what had been done since we met as a team in July, I was very pleased to see that two of them had been able to do community checks for Luke 4-5 in their individual villages. The groups were made up of people old and young, male and female, which is always a plus and there was good feedback from both checking sessions.
One of the translators took some time before he began the community checking session to go over some orthography changes and notes with those participating to get their response. We have two a's: 'a' and 'aa' and in the last year, the decision was made to add an 'x' to the alphabet to represent the variations of the velar/uvular fricatives so now we use 'k' and 'x' rather than only 'k'. It was encouraging to hear that the participants at that community checking session were pleased with the changes and thought them beneficial. If the orthography isn't easily used, people simply won't use it.
After the community checks are done, especially if more than one was done for a section of the text as happened in our case, we need to incorporate those edits into the text while making sure we do not alter the accuracy of the text. So for each edit, we look at it, talk about it, and then decide is it a good change or is there some other way we can change the text to reflect the input while keeping the accuracy.
It's not a quick process. Hopefully as time goes on and the team grows and develops in their experience it can go a bit faster, but for now we're trying to keep our focus on how much we want the text to be clear, accurate, and natural and not just on how long each step of the process takes to complete. Honestly, I'm the one who struggles the most with the time, that's part of my western cultural identity coming out.
I have to keep remembering that this is the first book this team is translating and as such, we still have a lot to learn at every step of the journey. Can we also just stop and mention again how important prayer is to this work? It's vital. Our prayers, your prayers, the prayers of the communities of the translators. They are all so important to the process.
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