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By Eddie, on February 9th, 2010
In a rather dramatic headline, the Times has announced the imminent arrival of a phone which will translate instantly between 6,000 languages.
Google is getting all futuristic on us with plans to implement Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-worthy mobile phone translation software in the next generation of telecommunications gadgets.
The Times Online reports that the internet giant has been developing new translation software for mobile phones that will see two people from different sides of the world able to converse in real time, without needing to speak the same language…
…The technology is still in its concept phase but given the steps Google has already taken with its online text-to-text translation service, and more recently with its voice-to-text GoogleVoice technology, it shouldn’t be too long before we start to see this technology implemented into tomorrow’s smartphones.
I have a Google Android phone, and I must admit that I am very impressed by the voice recognition. I can click on a button and then speak into the phone and it will immediately search Google for whatever it is I said. It rarely gets things wrong, even with my odd Mackam-living-in-the-South accent. However, the actual translation bit of the system is a bit of a problem. Google Translate is a very impressive piece of software. It does a good job of translating simple texts between major languages. However, the text that it churns out never quite sounds natural – it sounds like a computer. Not only that, but the system is more or less unable to cope with complex metaphors, and other figures of speech. It’s fine if you want to know how to buy a train ticket to Strasbourg, but not so good if you want a good translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
So, even between major languages, there is still a while to go before this becomes more than just an automated phrase book. But what about the claim that this will reach 6,000 languages? A while ago, I wrote about a claim that Google Translate (or something like it) would allow us to translate the New Testament in 20 minutes. The nub of the problem is that translation software is based on an analysis of a large corpus of data, and those corpora simply don’t exist for most minority languages in the world. Very often, the first large text to be available in digital format is the Bible. So if we are going to use our phones or Google translate to do Bible translation, we will have to start by translating the Bible the old fashioned way and loading it up into the system. Hardly a time saver.
The day when people will be able to read the Greek New Testament into their cellphone and have a reliable translation into an African language appear is a long way away.
By Eddie, on February 7th, 2010
Over the weekend, Clayboy has posted a short piece which touches on one of my pet hates in preaching:
One of the biggest warning flags in a sermon comes when the preacher says: “Now, in Greek, the word is … which (literally) means …” Sometimes they know what they’re talking about. More often they are about to pull a fast one. (Read on!)
By Eddie, on February 7th, 2010
 This weekend, Sue and I visited the wonderful Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. The weather was cool and foggy, which gave an amazing atmosphere to the ruins. Which I hope comes across in these photographs.
It must have been a hard life being a monk here through the hard winter months, and even the summers are hardly hot and balmy is this part of the world.
It was an interesting thinking back a couple of weeks to the worship service I attended in Ouagadougou. The setting was very different: hot sun in place of Yorkshire fog and bright colours in place of grey stone. But it’s not just the externals that were different. I wonder what the monks of Fountains Abbey, their lives ordered by the daily rule of Benedict, would make of an African Assemblies of God service and vice-versa.
The style of music, the way of praying, the manner or reading and learning from Scripture are all hugely different in the two contexts. I suspect that just about the only thing that would be recognisable between the two contexts is the cross which appears prominently in the church in Burkina and which no doubt appeared at Fountains Abbey during its heyday. The quiet contemplation and ordered life of the monks seems to have very little in common in with the hectic life and worship of people in a modern day capital city in West Africa. And yet both claim to be Christian. So which is the authentic face of the Christian message?
Both of them, of course. Authentic Christianity is worked out in the lives of communities as they take on board the message of the Gospel and live it out within the context they find themselves. Life in England in the middle ages was drastically different to life in modern day Burkina Faso and because of this we would expect the expression of Christianity to look very different. I will return (again) to the question of how Christianity relates to culture in the near future. But perhaps the most important question that we can ask is what does authentic Christianity look like in our culture today? Britain has undergone huge changes over the last thirty years and I would expect that our living out of the Gospel would reflect that.
By Eddie, on February 4th, 2010
The phrase ‘the end of an era’ is extremely overused. Even something as banal as a pop group splitting up can be called ‘the end of an era’. But there are events which are so momentous that they truly should be described as the end of an era. Recently, the last speaker of the Bo language died, marking the end of a 70,000 year linguistic history.
When Boa Sr died, the Bo language died with her, though in a sense, the language actually died when the second last speaker died. Languages are a social phenomenon and you can’t really have a language only spoken by one person any more than you can play tennis with only one player and one racquet.
But what does it matter that the Bo language has finally died out? Unless you are a specialist on the Andaman islands, you have probably never even heard of the language. A lot of people would say that it doesn’t matter at all. I’ve even heard some Christians suggest that a language dying out is a good thing, because it means that there is one less language in need of Bible translation.
However, to my mind, the loss of a language is a tragedy. Each language is unique and gives us a distinct insight into human nature and culture. But even more so, each language and culture is able to express unique things about the nature and character of God. With the loss of Bo, the human race is diminished ever so slightly in its ability to talk about itself and about God. It’s a shame.
Read more about Bo and listen to a short recording of the language here.
By Eddie, on February 4th, 2010
Today has been full of meetings and travel and I suspect that I won’t have the energy or inspiration to write anything myself. In the absence of that, I’d like to point you to two excellent posts, which are sort of related to each other. The first is by Mark who writes on The Greater Commission:
Understanding what God commands, but being ignorant of the revelation of God that prompts the command actually affects the way we carry out that command. If we hear Jesus’ call to make disciples of all nations, but don’t see the missional nature of God’s actions running through the Bible, we’ll be tempted to think that mission is our job – a task God has given us to complete alone. And so we’ll devise whatever strategies we can to accomplish that task as quickly and easily as possible. On the other hand if we understand that mission is at the heart of God’s character, and Jesus’ command is actually an invitation to be part of what God is doing, we’ll depend completely on him, in the knowledge that we are part of something so much bigger. We won’t be tempted to cut corners when we think God isn’t looking, or to achieve our goals in ways that are contrary to how God works.
Our culture values following instructions. As Christians we’re always tempted to reduce the Christian life to following rules, hoping that if we work hard enough at completing the tasks set before us, we’ll finally stand in front of God and hear him say “Well done good and faithful servant”. But I’m not sure that God defines obedience in this way.
The Bible teaches us that God cares deeply that we obey his commands, but that, despite what our reductionist culture teaches us, those commands can never be divorced from his relationship with us. We should obey God’s commands, but unless our obedience is a response to the revelation we see of him, and is a product of our relationship with him, we’re no better than the Pharisees in their hollow adherence to the rules.
Ultimately we need to have a whole-Bible understanding of God’s mission, not so that we can carry out the right commands and follow the right rules, but so that we can know the missional nature of our God, and through our relationship with him, respond by joining with him in sharing his nature with people from all nations. (Read More)
And the second, very challenging, but rather long, post is from Onesimus online:
But Christianity here (in Kenya) is still a remarkably Western game. The way churches are organized, the way theological education is undertaken, the way leaders are trained, the way evangelism is done, the way sermons are preached, the way ‘worship’ is understood, the way aid is given, the way structures are devised—the assumptions are entirely Western, and the results are appliquéd over great swaths of very non-Western ways of thinking and being, and with universally dubious results (ok, an overstatement, perhaps, but you get my drift). Because this is simply the way things are done here, seemingly everyone makes the assumption that we are all doing what should be done.But too few people are connecting the dots between the shallowness of Christianity around us and the inability of the ‘gospel’ as it is assumed and presented to engage with the actual lives all these people actually live… (Read More)
By Eddie, on February 3rd, 2010
 How on earth do we get Bible translation onto the agenda of the church in the UK? There are still 300,000,000 people without a word of Scripture available to them – but it’s ever so hard to make people in the UK aware of this.
Let me give you an example. Gordon Kennedy, who is a very nice chap, blogged on Monday evening’s meeting at Kingdom Come in Belfast. He gives a brief overview of the evening, including a summary of the amazing message from Gordon MacDonald. However, he failed to mention the short Wycliffe presentation that I gave that evening.
Kingdom Come is a big conference for church leaders and I knew that the main speaker would be excellent. It was always going to be difficult to make a mission presentation stand out, so I thought long and hard about what I should do. I avoided doing a traditional missionary talk and tried to capture people’s imagination for God’s mission. My mention of Wycliffe was almost a throwaway line at the end. I hoped that by doing something unexpected, my message would be memorable – judge for yourself how well I succeeded.
My talk was part of the opening section; the bulk of the evening was given over to Gordon MacDonald. His talk was excellent and inspiring. It was just what the leaders there needed – it certainly did me a lot of good. But, sadly from my point of view, I’m pretty sure that by the end of his talk everyone had more or less forgotten what I had said. Of course, I was pleased that the main message was so good, but boy was I frustrated that the short presentation I had worked on was so overwhelmed.
Just how do we get to promote the need for people around the world to hear God’s word in their own language? Most weekends, I end up speaking about Bible translation in a church somewhere around the country, but there must be a way to speak to larger groups (though church invites are always welcome).
By Eddie, on February 2nd, 2010
By Eddie, on January 30th, 2010
Ours is an instant age. We move quickly and we want to have instant access to our money, to music and to people. But is faster always better? What about when it comes to Bible translation?
Last week, I had the amazing privilege to sit in on meetings where people were planning to translated the Scriptures for the remaining languages in Burkina Faso (read about them here). During the meetings, I found myself musing on the issue of how long it will take to actually do the translations. Generally, it is assumed that it is good to make translations available to people as quickly as possible. I regularly hear two reasons for wanting to speed up translation.
The first is that people need to hear the message of Scripture and until translation is finished, many will not be able to do so. Last week, I heard a number of Burkinabé translators expressing concern for their families who were not yet able to fully appreciate the Bible because it wasn’t available in their language. The fact that people around the world are living and dying without a knowledge of God’s reconciling love should give a sense of urgency to our mission, including Bible translation.
Another reason that people give for speeding up Bible translation comes from an eschatological view that implies that the return of Jesus will somehow be triggered when every people group has access to the Gospel. At some point in the future I will do a blog post on Matthew 24:14, but for now let me simply say that I don’t believe that it is talking about the end of the age or a worldwide Christian mission. (If you want to disagree with me, wait till I write my full post on the subject. I’ll delete any comments on this post that get into the exegesis of this verse as it isn’t the central point of the post.)
In my experience these are the two main reasons given for speeding up Bible translation: one is good, the other (I believe) less so. But is faster always better? The thing is, I can think of two good reasons for slowing down the rate of Bible translation, too.
Just for a moment, reflect on the resistance in some English speaking circles to the use of Modern Bible translations. Now imagine that you are a Christian leader in a minority language community. You have been using the Bible in a trade language for years, you are familiar with it and as far as you are concerned this is the only Bible you have ever seen. Now imagine that someone comes along and tells you that you should use the Bible in another language altogether (even if it is your own). It is not hard to imagine that some people will oppose the use of this new-fangled Bible, even if it is easier to understand. It is not just the King James only crowd who can be reluctant to move to a new translation – it happens all round the world. If all we want to do is translate and publish Bibles, we can move as fast as we like. But if we want people to be enthusiastic and eager to use the new translation, we may need to spend significant time in building relationships, explaining how translation works and demonstrating the advantages of the new book.
Another reason for taking time to do translation is that the process of translation itself can be of great value. A while ago, Mark Brown rashly suggested that Google tools would soon allow us to translate the Bible into a new language in 20 minutes. At the time, I pointed out that this was not as imminent as he suggested. I also said that even if we could translate that fast, we may not want to;
But, even if we could do a Bible translation in twenty minutes, would we really want to? As Lingamish pointed out, the problem is not getting the word translated, it is getting people to read it and base their lives on it. One of the most important aspects of any translation project is the Godly lives of the translation team demonstrating the reality and relevance of the message long before the words emerge from the printer. As one African church leader put it, ‘we want to see the Holy Spirit in the lives of the translators long before we see the words Holy Spirit on the page’. (Read more)
Speed is a value in Western culture: a very high value. Because of this, it is hard for us to realise that speed per se is not a Gospel value. In Bible translation terms, the Gospel value is to see communities and individuals bringing their lives into alignment with God’s claims on them as they get to grips with the message of Scripture. All things being equal, it is good to get the Bible to people as quickly as possible – but speed must never be allowed to compromise the Gospel impact of the missional work of translation. As I wrote in the post quoted above:
There is a value in speeding up Bible translation, but not at the cost of losing the human and community touch. This is something we westerners with our task orientation find very hard to understand …
Somewhat related to this is my post examining Wycliffe’s long term vision: Vision 2025.
By Eddie, on January 28th, 2010
This is the third in a series of three talks (in French) on working across organizational boundaries. They were originally given at a seminar planning for Bible Translation in Burkina Faso.
By Eddie, on January 28th, 2010
Take a look at the new Wycliffe Bible Translators’ website, it’s rather good!
By Eddie, on January 27th, 2010
Part two of my three part series (in French) on working across organisational boundaries.
By Eddie, on January 27th, 2010
This is the first in my series of three devotional talks on the subject of working across organisational boundaries. Be warned, this talk was given in something approximating to French!
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