New Methods in Consultant Development

This paper deals with a new way of selecting and training Bible Translation Consultants. Traditionally in SIL and Wycliffe organizations, prospective Translation Consultants were selected from Translation Advisors with extensive involvement in a minority language translation project. However, a new system is being tested in which people with no translation experience are being trained as Translation Consultants. This paper describes what current SIL Translation Consultants have learned in their respective projects before they became consultants, and makes suggestions about how those skills and knowledge can be incorporated into the training programs of the new system.