How we are translating the Bible into Nigerian languages –Yakubu Laar
How is the Nigeria Bible Translation Trust working to achieve its objectives?The Nigeria Bible Translation Trust (NBTT) has the core responsibility of helping language communities in Nigeria translate the scriptures from English to the mother tongues. It is the desire of everybody to have the scripture translated into the language that they understand best. When […]
How is the Nigeria Bible Translation Trust working to achieve its objectives?
The Nigeria Bible Translation Trust (NBTT) has the core responsibility of helping language communities in Nigeria translate the scriptures from English to the mother tongues. It is the desire of everybody to have the scripture translated into the language that they understand best. When you read the Bible in your mother tongue, you feel that the Bible is talking to you directly. It speaks to your heart. The Nigeria Bible Translation Trust is helping the language communities to translate the scripture into the language that speak to their heart, the language they understand best. And by translating the Bible into Nigerian languages, we are helping to develop, preserve and stop the languages from going into extinct. At present, over 300 languages in Nigeria are yet to have something. Nigeria Bible Translation Trust is working with over 120 languages to produce materials that will be there for many years, that will give people their identity; because without the language, the identity is lost.
How do you identify the languages into which you translate the Bible?
Some of the language groups come to us. People get to know what we do through the media or because they know our staff and so on, and they write to us. Outside the head office here (Jos), we have our regional offices in all parts of this country through which people reach us. On our own, we reach out to even languages that have not been discovered, to identify them, at least for future contact. Even some of the languages that are on the ethnolog (a book on languages) are just there; nobody is talking about them, possibly because of their small number, some in the range of 8,000 or even less. We get to know about them mainly through contacts here or from our regional offices. Through our ministry, the NBTT, we are able to discover even languages that are not on the ethnolog.
To what extent has the NBTT achieved the objectives for which it was established?
Many people have come to be able to live as true disciples of Jesus Christ just by reading about Him from scripture which ministers clearly to their heart. When you read the scripture and understand it well, you are able to be that which it teaches you to be. People who regarded Christianity as a foreign man’s religion because they read or are taught the scripture in English, now view Christianity as their own religion because they read the scripture in their own language. We are able to achieve indiginalization of the scripture because the people themselves do the translation. We don’t bring foreigners to translate the Bible from English. We pick people from the community and train them. They are the ones who do the translation into their own language. As these native translators do the translation, with literacy activities going on among the people, you see lives of readers of the scriptures transformed. When we brought in a few artists recently to showcase in their mother tongue the impact of scripture in their lives, you could see how people were happy as the artists expressed the scripture culturally. The reason is this: this scripture we are talking about (the Bible) is written based on somebody else’s culture. Must we throw away our culture and solely imbibe another person’s culture? No.
On the whole, how many languages are you working on and how many have had the Bible written in them?
At present, we are working with 126. We are working on the New Testament for 37 of them and the Old Testament for 56 of them. 33 languages have both the New and Old Testament Bible completely translated. Now, we are working with the 33 in the area of literacy. We have 30 that are prospective ones. More than 30, in fact, because we’ve just signed partnership with five more, and I’m going to sign with three more for whom we are going to start the New Testament.
How do you go about getting the Bible translated for each of these languages?
We conduct a survey on any language that we are to work on. We research their orthography (the way the words are spelt); and then we develop the writing systems for them.
How are you able to take up so many languages at a time?
We work with those coming as we get funding. As long as we have the funds, we cannot say let’s finish with this language before we start with another. Work on every language takes a number of years. Translation of the New Testament takes as much as five years, a minimum of five years to finish the complete New Testament and take it to typesetting stage; while the Old Testament takes about seven years. Some can go well beyond those years, depending on the commitment of the translators and availability of consultants to check what has been translated. We work in partnership with foreign organisations, such as the Wycliffe Global Alliance (an alliance of organisations functioning to have the Bible translated for language groups that need it). The organisations help us in sourcing for consultants who will ensure that we keep to global standards in our translation efforts. Because we have standards which we must attain, we can’t rush and finish any translation process. We must meet these standards so that we don’t misguide people that we are working to guide.
You mentioned funding briefly. How do you get the funds for your projects?
We have organisations supporting us, as I have said, like the Wycliffe. We also have the Seed Company (which works mainly at linking donors to Bible translation projects). Nigerian churches and individuals also help. The communities themselves, communities requesting translation into their language groups, also contribute to their respective projects. We sign an agreement with each community that we work with. As we go round and look for donors, we expect that the language group also raise support, in form of counterpart funding. It is a collaborative work between us.
How does a language group go about getting you to have the Bible translated into their language?
If a language group wants a Bible translation, they write to us. Then, we ask them to get their whole community involved, create awareness about the project among the people. The traditional ruler down to everybody must be aware and be supportive; because it’s a community work. Our ministry is not just translation; there is the language development component. Every member of the community must be aware and supportive so that you don’t get the Bible translated into a language that someone could come up and disown. This is more so, because there could be different dialects within a community. All the dialects must be taken into consideration and all the dialects must come together and agree on what the translation should be. The community has to assemble a committee made up of dependable members, because it is the committee that we will work with. We sign a partnership with the language community represented by the committee and then we start sourcing funds and consultants for the project. Part of the process is to train the members of the language group that are chosen for the translation project. We organise a comprehensive interactive training workshop. Part of the preliminary stage is to discover the orthography of the language, after which the alphabet chart is drawn. Other writing systems and materials are determined and the starting phase could be said to be underway.
While some language groups have had the complete Bible translated, others have just the New Testament, or so.
What accounts for the difference?
There is limit to what we can do at particular times. It depends on a lot of things, including the commitment of the language group and all that are involved. In some projects, you could start with 10 translators only for more than half the number to drop out of the project along the way. Besides, the standard requires that for any language translation, you first do the New Testament and test the translation before you get to the Old Testament. Even within the New Testament, we have what we call trial publication. You publish some of the books first and then the full New Testament after the trial publication would have justified the publication of the whole New Testament. It is a stage by stage procedure.
The Bible exists in scores of version, such as New King James, The Living Bible, Good News Version, and New English Bible. How do you determine your translation source in light of the different versions?
The language community and translators decide which one they are comfortable with.
What should Nigerians expect from the NBTT in the near future?
Nigeria is home to over 500 language groups. We are working with over 120. The Bible Society of Nigeria, I understand, is working with about a hundred. That means that between us, we are working with over 200, and Nigeria has over 500 languages. That leaves us with more than 300 languages that are yet to start translation of the Holy Bible. We have a vision that by the year 2025, we want to see Bible translation started in all the remaining languages, or at least, all those that need it.