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Acceptable

We have a lot of teaching in our churches these days about how we are accepted. That's great.



In Bible translation we used to talk about accurate, clear and natural translations. More recently we have started adding a fourth criteria for a good translation: acceptable. What does that mean? It means a translation that is acceptable to the audience it was intended for. Now that raises a lot of questions - what if we have two audiences, a primary and a secondary audience? How do we work out what these audiences are like? What does that mean in practice? Let's take each in turn:

  1. Primary and secondary audiences are important to define. The primary audience is the main audience you're translating for. The secondary is one that might have some influence. For instance if you are working in an area where most people are Muslims, you might have the majority Muslims as your primary audience, and believers in Isa al Masih (Jesus the Messiah) who gather in small groups as your secondary audience. 
  2. To work out what the audiences are like we need to study their worldview. This is a step we often skip but it is worth filling out a form like this one: worldview form before we start translation. For mother tongue translators it is often enough simply to state which audience they are translating for, and minute (record) that decision in writing in the project brief.
  3. In practice when we are choosing Key Terms we will be thinking of their appropriateness for the primary and secondary audiences. In the example above, where the primary audience is Muslim, we don't completely neglect the secondary audience, as they need to accept the translation too, at least as one they would give to their friends and neighbours. It also affects lots of other things - the style (more formally equivalent or more meaning-based) and register (high or low) of the translation - the media that is used to distribute it (oral, audio, video, print...) and the packaging used for that distribution, when necessary. It will also affect which portions of Scripture you translate first, and distribute first, and what they are called ('Torah' or 'Pentateuch'? 'Zebbur' or 'Psalms'?).
So there is a lot to think about in terms of making a translation acceptable. Broadly speaking that whole area is called 'Scripture Engagement' and has been studied for some decades now. Hopefully translation work will be more effective as a result! We pray that may be the case...

Project brief: a document used to define the audiences and state what they are like, as well as discuss who the primary stakeholders in the project are, and what the goal of the project is.
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