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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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

We would be grateful if you could provide feedback on the usefulness of this feature and let us know what we can improve.

Review of a TIPs presentation at the 2019 conference of the American Translators Association in Source (quarterly publication of the ATA’s Literary Division), Spring 2020.

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.”

Read more from this review right here.

“The vision of the Translation Insights and Perspectives website was to build something to help Christians around the world understand the value of Bible translation, and also expand their horizons about the biblical text. It does this by exposing them to the different ways other languages express certain concepts in the Bible. Put simply, it curates insights and perspectives about the Bible, gleaned from hundreds of languages and translation projects.”

Read more from this interview about the Translation Insights & Perspectives tool right here.

English translations may approach a Bible verse or book in radically different ways—within certain parameters, that is — the parameters set by the English language. And that’s true for any language. While almost everything that is expressible through language can be expressed in any language, it simply won’t be.

Confused yet?

Let me explain with a simple but—when it comes to English and most other languages—oh-so-complex example.

It’s about pronouns.

See the rest of this in the new blog post in Patheos right here.