The Reinvention of Bible Translation A 21 st Century Disruption? Gilles Gravelle The Seed Company BT2013.

The Reinvention of Bible Translation

A 21st Century Disruption?

Gilles GravelleThe Seed CompanyBT2013

• How meaning is made and where does it reside?

• The turn to transdisciplinary studies in Bible translation

• Globalization and the Web

• Collaborative translation

Building on the Shoulders of Giants

• Meaning is a universal code

• This makes meaning generally predictable

• Translation = transferring the code

• It is disembodied information

In this light, translation “can be looked at as a

process of substitution, in which one code for

referring to a realm of universal forms is replaced

with another code referring to the same realm” (Tymoczko 2010, 290).

Code Model of Translation

• Meaning is a universal code

• This makes meaning generally predictable

• Translation = transferring the code

• It is disembodied information

In this light, translation “can be looked at as a

process of substitution, in which one code for

referring to a realm of universal forms is replaced

with another code referring to the same realm” (Tymoczko 2010, 290).

Code Model of Translation

In addition to linguistic meaning, there is:

• ideological meaning

• metaphorical meaning

• embodied meaning

• emotional meaning.

Meaning is derived from genre and performatives

It is also derived from historical and cultural context.

Embedded within these two contexts are situations,

practices, customs, symbols, and qualities that all express

meaning

(Tymoczko 2010, 282-284).

Non-linguistic Meaning

Non-linguistic signs are potentially:

• Images, cultural artifacts, secret codes, thoughts, feelings, plants, animals, lines and colors, smells and tastes.

The receiving culture makes meaning from these sorts of non-linguistic signs through the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

(Robert Hodgson, 2007:164-182)

Inter-semiotics

It’s not about activating the right symbol; it’s about dynamically constructing the right mental experience of the scene in your mind’s eye.  (Benjamin Bergen, Louder Than Words, 2012)

Meaning Making, disembodied or embodied?

“The conceptual systems of various cultures partly depend on the physical environments they have developed in”.

(George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By)

Meaning Making, disembodied or embodied?

Thinking

Speaking

Writing

Much of our understanding of the code model is shaped by Enlightenment positivism, birthing structuralism = predictability.

Summary of these thoughts, so far….

• Meaning is perhaps more complicated than we had thought

• Meaning making is more of an embodied experience than we had thought

Giving rise to cognitive linguistics and relevance theory

Meaning Making, disembodied or embodied?

The Turn to Transdisciplinary Studies

• How sociology speaks into scripture distribution

• How psychology helps us understand group creativity dynamics in translation

• How ethics guides us in our understanding of the role of translator

• How literary studies helps us grapple with the source text

• How gender studies inform us on gender bias influences in translation

• How cognitive science helps us understand meaning making

• How literacy is understood beyond reading and writing

• How Web technology is introducing a new pedagogy. Maybe even a new epistemology.

Web 1.0 was text oriented, with an emerging graphical interface.

It provided connectivity, but it was more information oriented with one-way communication

Web 2.0 is media rich, high connectivity between people and places, where the boundaries between oral, visual and written text are open and people flow in and out of those zones in seemingly natural ways.

Web 2.0

Globalization and the Web = accelerated learning, connecting and producing.

This makes it possible for rich and customizable learning.

It may be shaping a new pedagogy.

The next translation manual?

Web 2.0

Collaborative Translation

Considering all of this, how then should Bible Translation be done?

“European history of translation has witnessed a tension between an individualistic and a collaborative approach to translation. From Antiquity to the Renaissance, translation was commonly practiced by teams comprised of specialists of different languages.”

“Now.. the myth that the singular translator could or indeed should assume the place of an “original” author is being challenged.”

IATIS Collaborative Translation: from Antiquity to the Internet” 5-7 June 2014, Paris

“Distribution happens naturally when the localizers are involved as producers and not just consumers.”

“Localizers have ideas about the purpose of distribution, and they use those ideas when localizing.”

“They are participants, not passive observers or consumers. Widespread diffusion by unexpected means occurs.”

Collaborative = Co-creation and Distribution

Anthony Pym (2004). The Moving Text. Localization, Translation, and Distribution

Angika Pilot Project 2012. Testing Group Collaboration

Simple question: if they gain access to each other over the internet will they work together, and how if they do?

– 1,323 people responded by contributing their time to the translation

– Over 100,000 votes cast dealing with various content topics

– 78 users have drafted

– People from seven different regions where Angika people reside have participated

Collaborative = Co-creation and Distribution

Preliminary draft

• Crowdsourcing and social media tools enable greater collaborative translation.

• Starting with oral and text process with the community before the first verse is translated

• Ongoing feedback loops (i.e. processing) with the community

Exegesis First Draft

Team Review

Second DraftCommunity

Hermeneutics

Community Feedback

Final Draft

Community Feedback

Community Feedback