Language committees

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Revitalized

I have written several times that translation committees are key to the success of translation in Africa. Have good translators is also important, of course. A translation committee is a group of carefully selected volunteers from the language community who oversee the work of the translators including setting goals, raising funds, creating awareness and organizing the sale and distribution of the translation. How well the committee does its job can affect how well the translation is accepted and how widely it is distributed and read. If it does not work well, some churches might just refuse to use translation, sticking with English or a regional language.

Siwu committee with regional translation coordinator

The translation into the Siwu language in Ghana’s Volta Region had a very dynamic and well-known translator who raised a lot of awareness for the translation and promoted it. When he fell ill and passed away, the translation committee knew that it would have to pick up the slack. Michael Serchie, the regional translation coordinator (center front) helped the community update the committee and revitalize it.

Michael is serving translation programs in more than a dozen languages. But even his wise and dynamic leadership is not enough if the language communities themselves are not interested enough to get involved. Sometimes, it takes a dramatic turn of events to get things moving. Michael saw that was happening and jumped in.

Pray for the translation in Siwu, and for the committee that they would work hard to see it widely used and distributed.

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Language Committees: Part 3

This is the last in a series of posts on language committees. I’m writing posts on this topic because helping language committees be more effective is currently the focus of my ministry.

In my first post, I explained where language committees fit in the five groups that are all needed to make a translation program successful. In my second, I wrote about the problems that happen when the committee doesn’t do its job well. In this post, I propose that there are three underlying causes of weak language committees.

The first underlying cause has to do with who is on the committee. If there are committee members from various parts of the community, the committee will be more effective. For example, are all the major church denominations are represented on the committee? A committee that represents only a very narrow swatch of the community will almost certainly result in a translation effort that is full of problems.

The second underlying cause of committee ineffectiveness is motivation. When the members of the language committee are deeply committed to the translation and therefore care about its success, the committee will be more effective. A colleague of mine is dealing with three ineffective committees where people became members because they thought there would be money in it. Sometimes this is related to the first point – the wrong people are on the committee. Other times, it is related to the next point.

The last underlying cause of committee effectiveness or ineffectiveness is lack of knowledge. Doing a translation for the very first time in a language obviously means that people will be doing something they have never done before. Unless the committee gets orientation, usually from the translation agency, it will have trouble making good decisions. Lack of information can lead community leaders to select the wrong people to serve on the committee.

As you have certainly noticed, having effective committees is no small matter.

I started out my focus on committees by seeing the issue as being mostly knowledge and the solution, therefore, being mostly orientation or training. Now, my focus has shifted to committee composition as the cornerstone issue. After all, what good would it due to train the wrong or unmotivated committee members? To address those issues I am working with two GILLBT leaders. We are dealing with the issues as a team.

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Language Committees: Part 2

I’m in the middle of a series on language committees, which are currently the focus of my ministry. In my last post, I explained where language committees fit in the five groups that are all needed to make a translation program successful.

In this post, I will present some things that go wrong when the language committee doesn’t do its job well.

If the committee fails to do a good job of choosing the translators, then problems can occur. I witnessed a case where the committee chose translators because they were related to the committee chair. Their translation was so poor that they had to be replaced with translators chosen for their skill. I have seen several cases where churches and Christians started loosing confidence in the translation because one of the translators was not living according to the Bible’s norms. The language committee had messed up either its selection or supervision of the translators.

I was close to one translation where a key church leader denounced the New Testament as soon as it was published. The committee had failed to mobilize all the churches in favor of the translation. The man who denounced the translation perceived, perhaps rightly, that the translation effort was dominated by a rival denomination.

I have seen some cases where the funding agency limited its funding because the churches in the language area contributed far less than they were capable. The committee simply failed to mobilize the churches to give.

Lastly, I know of several cases where translations sit in storerooms unsold and unread. One of the reasons is that the language committees fails to promote the translation or even, in some cases, to distribute it.

I have a list of even more problems caused by ineffective committees, but I think you get the point.

Next week, I’ll talk about the underlying weaknesses of committees that are the source of these problems and what can be done to strengthen committees. As we will see, sometimes committees are ineffective through no fault of their own.

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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.