Bible Translation Basics: Communicating Scripture in a Relevant Way

by Harriet S. Hill, Ernst-August Gutt, Margaret Hill

Bible Translation Basics will help translators work with language communities to determine the kind of Scripture product(s) that are most relevant for them, given their abilities and preferences. Scholars over the past thirty years have made significant advances in understanding how human communication functions. Rather than solely looking for meaning in texts alone, texts are now seen to provide clues to hearers so that they can discover the speaker's intended meaning. Hearers use other inputs as well, such as things they already know and information from the speech environment, in order to understand not only what the words of the text say, but also what the speaker is communicating with those words. The significant implications of this for Bible Translation are the subject of this new book. Bible Translation Basics accomplishes two things: 1) it expresses these developments in communication theory at a basic level in non-technical language, and 2) it applies these developments to the task of Bible translation in very practical ways. The content of this book has been tried and tested around the world, and will aid people with a secondary school education or higher to understand how communication works and to apply those insights to communicating Scripture to their audiences.

Genres: Linguistics

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[David Barnett · Rating 2 out of 5]

😴

[Jon]

Thorough and Easy-to-understand introduction to sophisticated Bible translation issues

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in creating a Bible translation or even in understanding key issues that translators face. It gives an easy, step-by-step breakdown of sophisticated communications dynamics, such as the basics of relevance theory, in the context of practical advice for translators.

[Bledar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great in helping shape a project

I loved how the book dealt with Bible translation from a communication standpoint. Probably, the most helpful concept was that of “contextual mismatch,” how to understand it and address it.