Grammar for Translation Consultants – A new Training Program Addressing Quality

A widely neglected aspect of quality in Bible translation is the role of target language structures. When checking translations, consultants use to focus on exegetical adequacy and lexical equivalence, but they tend to have no way of checking whether the translation adheres to the grammatical rules of the target language. This paper presents experiences with a new type of workshop trying to address this gap, targeting translation consultants and consultants-in-training. In four weeks a wide range of grammatical phenomena is presented that have an impact on the accuracy and naturalness of the translation.

While it is true that mother-tongue translators will not produce ungrammatical sentences, there are significant areas of grammar where linguistically untrained translators can miss the mark. Such situations arise when the target language provides more grammatical choices than the source language. As an example, if a translator is not aware that the target language provides inclusive and exclusive forms of the 1st person plural, then translations of any passage that contains the pronoun “we” will be a product of chance. Translators and consultants need to be aware of the choice to make sure that the translation always contains the adequate form.

There are many more areas of morphology and syntax where target languages may provide more choices than the source language. Being aware of the relevant phenomena for each language will allow the consultants to focus their attention on these matters during the checking sessions, and in this way to improve the quality.