UBS Translation Program in 2002

Report for International Forum of Bible Agencies
April 8-10, 2003, in Orlando, Florida, USA

I. Introduction

In the words of African anthropology, the year 2002 was characterized in UBS by “continuity and change”. There was continuity in that Bible translation in all its aspects is a process that continues even beyond the launching of a new translation to the correction and revision and to the use of the new translation. There was also change, change in UBS leadership, continuing change in UBS structures, and of course, change in world conditions including economics that has affected us all.

II. Translation Program

The UBS Translation Program belongs to the national Bible Societies, each of which determines its own priorities and sets its own translation goals within the broad guidelines adopted by UBS Councils and World Assemblies. Rare exceptions to this principle are major international languages where several Bible Societies may join together in a common effort, for example, the La Nouvelle Bible Segond Study Bible in French and the Swahili Habari Njema Study Bible. The chart below provides a summary of translation projects currently underway as recorded in the UBS Translation Management System:

The number of projects and of languages is roughly comparable with past years, though the number of Orthodox-related projects is on the rise. Interconfessional projects and projects primarily for Catholic readers increasingly raise the number of Deuterocanonical translations. Likewise, Study Bible projects are on the increase throughout the world with projects in 14 different languages planned or launched by the Bible Society of India alone. 20 Bibles and 26 New Testaments ranging from revisions to study Bibles were published this year.

III. Research and Writing

Like translation, research and writing are continuing long-term projects. The Translator’s Handbook series added another volume, A Handbook on Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi by David Clark and Howard Hatton, with completion of all handbooks on the Protocanon anticipated in 2006 and the DC books soon after. Meanwhile, projects adapting and writing handbooks are underway in Spanish, French, Russian, Indonesian, and jointly with SIL in Chinese. The book From One Language to Another: Functional Equivalence in Bible Translating by Jan de Waard and Eugene Nida (Thomas Nelson 1986) has been translated into French and is in press.

The year 2002 also saw the publication of the edited works of the UBS Translation Working Group from the Triennial Translation Workshop in 2000. The title is Bible Translation: Frames of Reference, Tim Wilt was the editor, and St. Jerome Press was the publisher. UBS is now studying various possibilities for producing and testing pedagogical materials on the basis of “Frames”. Current Trends in Scripture Translation comprised of 21 representative papers from TTW 2000 has been published as UBS Bulletin 194/194. Anthropological Approaches to the Interpretation of the Bible by Krijn van der Jagt was published in the UBS Monograph Series.

Major research projects include a Byzantine Text Project at Birmingham University, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta Project based at Fribourg University in Switzerland, a comparative study of the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint by Manuel Jinbachian, and the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew with Reinier de Blois as editor-in-chief, assisted by a number of Hebrew expert volunteers, among them SIL scholars. Also in the area of electronic tools, Paratext 6 will be available shortly with the feature of right-to-left scripts and a number of other enhanced checking features.

For those who have missed the World Translation Progress Report that was last published in 1999, it is now available through the UBS Translation Management System, and Scriptures of the World not published since 1996 will soon be available on-line through the American Bible Society. We are looking toward the development of “The Book of Two Thousand Tongues” to replace the out-of-print The Book of a Thousand Tongues (UBS 1972).

Although we used to speak almost exclusively of the American and German Bible Societies in the development of Helps for Translators and Scholarly Editions, today many Bible Societies are looking at the needs of their own churches and students and are increasingly preparing diglots, interlinear translations, textual apparatus, and other translators' helps and tools in their own linguistic and cultural contexts.

IV. Challenges

Four important areas where the UBS is seeking to develop guidelines for present and future work are 1) translation theory and principles for translations in Orthodox contexts, 2) adapting or localizing versions for new contexts, both Scriptures and scholarly materials, 3) translating and communicating the Scriptures in the New Media, and 4) recording and archiving what has been produced.

In regard to the latter point, the following table indicates the number of published Scriptures on record according to UBS and BFBS information. Publications that have not been submitted to the ABS Library in New York or the Cambridge University Library in England are not included in this record.

Report prepared and submitted by:
Dr Phil Noss, UBS Translation Services Coordinator
March 17, 2003