Rethinking Bible translation consultancy

The scarcity of translation consultants and the challenges of developing new ones have long been a bottleneck in Bible translation. To address this, consultants in Africa are reflecting on how language communities can play larger roles.

Imagine grains of sand in an hourglass. All need to fit through a tiny opening—the bottleneck—so each grain awaits its turn as gravity slowly moves them from top to bottom. Now imagine that in the top of that hourglass, each grain of sand represents a single, translated verse of drafted Scripture—the accumulated work of teams of people in a community and beyond. The sand in the bottom of the hourglass represents Scripture released to a community, leading to engagement, impact and transformation.

And the bottleneck? Most often, it’s the checking process, or consultancy. Bible translation projects often depend on a single consultant to work with the team in moving the work from “draft” to “finished.”  They are highly educated experts who give biblical, exegetical and linguistic insight to the process. Their training can take years, even decades.

In a way, a bottleneck is a good problem, because it means more Scripture is being translated than existing consultants can handle efficiently. This has been the case as global Bible translation movements have accelerated rapidly in the past several decades. But long-term, bottlenecks can lead to frustration and slowing of momentum. After all, what’s the use of a team pushing hard to finish a translation draft if it’s just going to sit for months or even years in a long queue waiting to be accuracy-checked?

Gathering to Rethink

Paul Kimbi spends his time thinking about these sorts of challenges. Based in his native Cameroon, he serves as the Wycliffe Global Alliance’s Consultant for Bible Translation Programmes. Along with CABTAL, the Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy, Paul hosted 24 consultants and consultants-in-training in Yaounde this past January. The group reflected together on ways to improve the consultancy bottleneck.

One unanimous conclusion: Much of the help needed is already present in those language communities. A growing, global movement aims to expand the role of consultants and share the workload—shifting the focus from merely delivering a translated product to fostering a relational process. The traditional notion of consulting is being broadened to involve not just highly specialised technical experts but also a diverse range of people including experienced translators, community leaders, and even local stakeholders—all contributing to the quality assurance process. 

The vision is not just about accuracy, but also about building capacity in translators and making the entire project a shared, community process.

‘We want to consider translation consulting as a whole ministry—the technical component of the work, the relational aspect and the spiritual components,’ Kimbi said. ‘We want to use all of these to help consultants and those in training to model out the Scriptures and transformation—and, in effect, the reason for Bible translation.’ 

The result is a more holistic approach, one that still nurtures the technical aspects of translation but also finds relational synergy that can bring Bible translation closer to the hearts of a community. 

A Long Journey

Samuel Ngeh is one of those 24 consultants who gathered in Yaounde. He served the Lamso Bible translation project in Cameroon for 12 years as an exegete (one who expounds or interprets Scripture). Then he worked under a translation consultant for seven more years before finally being certified as a consultant himself. In a country where the average life expectancy is 61 years, 19 years is a very long journey toward certification.

He appreciated the weeklong gathering’s focus.

‘We have to develop a strong and well-outlined growth plan for all consultants-in-training so that the development process is smooth and can be meaningfully followed through’, he said. 

Participants at the consultant training event in Yaoundé.

Beyond Just the Consultant 

A key question raised in Yaounde was: Who are the other actors in ensuring translation quality, and how can consultants work synergistically with them? Often, the community’s role in ensuring the translation’s relevance and accuracy is overlooked. But Kimbi said tacit knowledge, gained through lived experience, can energise a project and community. 

‘We want to see comprehensive quality where the translation consultant speaks into the accuracy and the community speaks into the naturalness,’ he said. ‘The community has a role to play in assuring the quality of Bible translation and every other stakeholder has a role to play in quality assessment.’

This means thinking of consultancy as something far beyond a purely academic exercise. 

‘This leads to the belief that the process itself, not just the final product, is crucial for ensuring quality’, Kimbi said. ‘After all, the quality of the process will determine the outcome while also facilitating the eventual use of the translation.’

All stakeholders, in one way or another, can speak into the quality, and this will accelerate the impact once a language community receives Scripture. And along the way, consultants become more than just overseers of a translation’s accuracy. They also serve as mentors and facilitators. 

‘Instead of solely focusing on the back translation, consultant notes, or technical checks, consultants can now play a role in inspiring the translator’s mission-driven passion, helping them see the deeper purpose of their work,’ Kimbi said. 

Zebedee Chia, translation consultant at CABTAL (right) in a working session with members of the Numala team.

Vision Takes Shape

This vision of expanding the consulting process has already begun to take shape following this innovative training. Busie Paulo, a translation consultant for Wycliffe South Africa, went home with a fresh notion. 

‘The community can contribute to assuring the quality of Bible translation by taking the project as their own,’ she said. ‘They should be the ones doing translation and the person from outside will be facilitating.

‘Instead of just saying “Someone has come to help us”, the community can take up some of the cost like helping in simple things like providing accommodation and offering food,’ she added. 

War Prompts Holistic Approach 

Wycliffe Ethiopia is running translation projects in 39 of its country’s 87 mother tongues. But in late 2020, war broke out in the northern part of the country, as the Ethiopian army and local Tigrayan fighters vied for control of the region. The two-year conflict was one of Africa’s deadliest in recent decades, claiming 600,000 lives and displacing more than 3 million people. 

Wycliffe Ethiopia had five translation projects in the region. As people were displaced by the war, going there and continuing translation work became difficult, said Getachew Yohannes, Bible translation consultant for Wycliffe Ethiopia. But it became an opportunity to expand the project’s roles and focus.

‘At that time, we relocated the translators to the capital, Addis Ababa,’ Yohannes said. ‘But we could not ignore the communities that were displaced and were going through a difficult time. We raised funds and supported the communities with food and other items, even though that was not part of our translation objective. 

‘Because of this, it was easy for us to continue working with the communities after the war. Now they know that we really cared for them. It was not just Bible translation. We tried to serve the whole person.’ 

Rethinking Funding Models

One of the facilitators that week in Yaounde was Evelyn Gan from Malaysia, who serves as the Alliance’s Consultant for Oral Translation Programmes. She said Bible translation funders often give priority to translation over literacy, Scripture engagement, linguistics and other support services. This indirectly affects the quality of the translation. One participant recalled that they once submitted a translation project, but the funder insisted that some literacy and Scripture engagement activities be removed. 

To be holistic in Bible translation, organisations shouldn’t look at just one funder, Gan said, but identify various funders for various aspects of a project. 

‘In that way,’ she said, ‘there is no big boss who will instruct an organisation to remove some aspects of the project from the budget.’ 

This will allow the implementing organisation to view the project more holistically, she said—with more voices and more a sense of local ownership. 

‘We can bring in the local church by allowing it to fund just a small aspect of the project, depending on their resources, thereby allowing different stakeholders to own the project.’

Dr Paul Kimbi

Paradigm Shifts in Training

As Bible translation movements grow, there are new actors, new trends and, of course, new paradigms. To Kimbi, this all represents opportunities to rethink.

‘Do we stay stuck with what has been called the traditional model–the translation consultant reading the back translation, studying the back translation (a word-for-word translation from the mother tongue back to the language of wider communication) and helping in the exegesis?’ he asked.  

He suggested a new training model which taps into communities’ already-available resources. To help build this model, he points to these questions:

• What resources are available in the community? 
• What is a functional Bible translation training model that is contextual?
• What do we need to know about a people group before starting Bible translation?
• What do we need to know about their expectations?
• What do the people already have that can speak into the context, and into the curriculum? 

Kimbi says this will avoid situations where ‘we just transpose a curriculum that has been successful somewhere, and fail to grasp what is salient on the ground that can contribute to the curriculum’.

Story: Isaac Forchie of CABTAL, reporting from Yaounde, Cameroon; Jim Killam of the Wycliffe Global Alliance.

Photos: Isaac Forchie. Illustration: ChatGPT

Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this story.