Language committees: Part 1

For the last few months, I have focused my work in Ghana on the question of making language committees more effective. It’s probably not clear to you what that means, so I’m going to dedicate a few blogs to the topic.

Language committees are a crucial cog in the translation machine serving minority languages in Africa. They play a very different role in translating into major languages like English. So my descriptions do not apply to those languages.

A program to translate the Bible into a language in Ghana involves five groups of people / organizations.

Translator’s
Reviewers
Translation agency
Funding agency

Language committee

The translators, also called the translation team, are just that – those who do the translation. These days, they are a group of 2-4 speakers of the language screened and chosen for their role and given special training. They are usually employed full time.

The reviewers are a group of unpaid volunteers who meet occasionally to read the draft translation proposed by the translators and comment on it. They mostly consider whether the draft translation communicates clearly.

The translation agency is an organization specializing in translating the Bible. It has experts in biblical languages, translation, and linguistics. It gives training, carries out accuracy checks, identifies which languages need translation, and works with language communities and churches to set up new translation programs, among other tasks.

The funding agency raises funds for translation in smaller languages.

The language committee is a group of unpaid volunteers which meets from time to time to initiate then guide the translation effort. They have a lot of responsibilities such as:

Choosing (with the help of the translation organization) and supervising the translators
Mobilizing their community in support of the translation, including giving.
Coordinating with the translstion and funding agency.
Setting program goals (New Testament, Old Testament, Jesus Film. etc.)
Promoting and/or organizing adult literacy
Choosing the reviewers and assuring they work well.
Stocking and distributing the translation,

As you can see, the language committee is, or at least should be, the glue that holds all the pieces together. In my next post, I’ll give examples of what can go wrong if the committee does not do its job well.