Metaglossia: The Translation World

The Bible presents its readers with a variety of themes, subjects, skills and personnel. This makes Bible translation interesting, exciting and also an arduous task. Due to its multifaceted nature, Bible translation requires the use of all our human faculties. It is therefore teamwork. This fits in perfectly with a Ghanaian proverb which says “wisdom is not the preserve of any one person.” As a result, every translation project taps into the skills of different people with the purpose of getting an accurate, clear and natural translation, one that is faithful to the original Hebrew or Greek text depending on the portion of Scripture being translated. The above scenario is exactly what happened seventeen years ago, GILLBT’s Translation Department organized a workshop on the book of Exodus for their translators. At that workshop, the translators constructed a model tabernacle which we read about in Exodus chapter twenty-five onwards. The construction was carried out under the guidance of a former GILLBT member, an expert craftsman and wood worker, Bob Schonveld and veteran translation consultants Bob and Nancy Schaeffer. The purpose then was to enable the translators get a hands on experience as well as a mental picture of the tabernacle so they could have a better understanding of the book in order to do a faithful translation. Back then, a number of GILLBT’S language projects translated either all or portions of the book of Exodus in their mother tongues.

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