“God’s communication with humanity was intended from the beginning for “every nation, tribe, and language.” While all languages are equally competent in expressing the message of the Bible, each language has unique capacities to communicate certain biblical messages in exceptionally enriching ways that other languages cannot. This Bible Plan explores seven of those hidden treasures that will expand how you think about God and his good news.”
Subscribe to the 7-day reading plan on YouVersion right here.
“This Bible Plan picks one word from each of the first few verses of the Gospel of John to uncover beautiful new insights from these familiar verses by looking at how other languages translate those words.”
Subscribe to the 7-day reading plan on YouVersion right here.
This podcast explores the genesis, goals and methods of the Translation Insights and Perspectives tool. Jost Zetzsche, the curator, is interviewed by Andrew Case.
With an ever-increasing number of languages in TIPs, it might feel disorienting to understand what the languages are and how they relate to each other.
So far it has been possible to find a link to the corresponding Wikipedia page underneath each language listing and — if applicable — a link to an online location of the already-translated part or whole of scripture in that language (see image 1 below).
Now (June 2020) we have added a taxonomy (= classification) that allows you to place each language within its language groups and relate it to other languages.
Below each language there are now two immediate language groups shown, preceded by an ellipsis:
Image 1: Immediate language groups
If you are familiar with the language groups, or if you would just would like to find out more, clicking on the ellipsis reveals the complete language groups hierarchy:
Image 2: Complete language hierarchy
Any of the language groups represents a link that leads to a page where the immediate subgroups or associated languages are listed. If you click on “Zapotec” in this case, you will see all the languages that are part of that group and are covered in TIPs, followed by the number of stories associated with each:
Image 3: All languages belonging to one language group
Each of these language listings is also a hyperlink that leads you to a page for that language (which would look like Image 1).
If you click on a language group that has other language groups listed underneath (as in this example “Zapotecan”), you will see all the language sub-groups containing other groups or languages that have stories associated with them:
Image 4: Language sub-groups
Selecting “Zapotec” brings you back to Image 3, and selecting “Chatino” displays all the languages that are part of that language group with stories in TIPs:
Image 5: All languages belonging to another language group
We would be grateful if you could provide feedback on the usefulness of this feature and let us know what we can improve.
At the FIT (International Federation of Translators and Interpreters) conference I had the chance to present a tool I’ve been working on for some time, and I’d like to introduce it here as well. But let’s start at the beginning.
As translators, we’re fascinated by languages, so it’s not hard to convince ourselves that the survival of indigenous languages is important. I also don’t have to repeat the dire statistics concerning the rapid loss of languages that we are experiencing. We know about this, and we care — even though we sometimes feel helpless in responding to the problem. How, though, do we communicate that urgency to others, or how do we at least awaken some interest in the rest of the world?
For about three years I have been working on a tool which I think has the potential to make that possible. It can change the conversation about why everyone should care about indigenous languages and their plight from ‘because it’s the right thing to do’ to if you don’t, you personally will lose out.’
See the rest of the article from the ITI Bulletin right here.
“One of the great blessings of being involved in Bible translation is that you get to wrestle with expressing God’s word in other languages and as you do, you begin to see things clearly that were, up till that point, somewhat opaque. Of course, not everyone can be a Bible translator, but thanks to a new website: Translation Insights and Perspectives those who aren’t involved in translation have access to insights from all sorts of languages.”
