Emic Genre Studies and Quality in Bible Translation

How an emic understanding of target language (TL) genre classifications can impact the quality of Bible translation and scripture engagement (SE): a case study from a Tibetic language.

This paper explores how a particular target language understands and classifies genres, and how such an understanding impacted the quality of Bible translation and the development of scripture engagement resources. More specifically, this paper demonstrates how an emic understanding of genre types within the vast corpus of Tibetan writings has impacted the quality of one Tibetan language translation and particularly the quality of SE materials. As Biel (2018) and others have noted, genre studies within the disciplines of linguistics and translation studies are by no means new. However, exploring an emic understanding of TL genre classification in relation to Bible translation and SE appears to be under represented in the literature. This paper represents one attempt to address this lacuna. Such a study of genre is also informative in gaining a deeper understanding of the worldview of the TL (for example, how knowledge is organized) which can further impact the quality of an SE program. This paper may also be of particular interest for those working in a Buddhist context.