Quality assurance in multimodal Bible translation

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the global conversation on Bible translation quality by demystifying some of the concepts and ideas from the ETEN Innovations Lab – Quality Assurance group. Multimodal Bible translation is defined as translation and scripture engagement taking advantage of a wider range of inter-semiotic (signing) systems simultaneously, that is sound, writing, still and moving images, gestures, digital, and performance in a variety of multimedia bouquets.

Four specific and related issues will be discussed: 1) what is understood by quality and quality assurance, 2) the multimodal origins of the scriptures, 3) an introduction to multimodal translation in general and to multimodal Bible translation in particular, and 4) four enablers of multimodal Bible translation, namely an alternative set of quality assurance agents, an alternative approach to the training of such quality assurance agents, an alternative weekly workflow and rhythm, and alternative scripture authentication processes for such multimodal translation processes and products.