Using Visual Arts to Improve the Translation: A Case Study with the Paypa Language

This presentation proposes a method to make a newly translated parable of the Two Builders (Luke 6:46-49) available for the Paypa people from central Brazil. It uses a short video illustrated with contextual visual arts depicting their geographic and cultural context. This work also explores how this art form helped the translators to improve the quality of the translation of that particular Bible portion. After introducing the Paypa people and the Bible translation team, this paper will present the Creating Local Arts Together (CLAT). This research methodology helps communities to reach kingdom goals using their arts. This work integrated into the CLAT process three participatory methods to engage the translation team in discussion and planning. The team submitted the produced video to a community check, and, as a result, they identified misunderstandings in the text. This paper will relate how they came to that understanding and what steps they took to work on that improvement. After that, this work will cover the theoretical principles of Status Corpus and Acquisition Development that help the community make plans for using the translated Scripture portion creatively. The final part will address the development of using arts in the translation process and in the Scripture Engagement and the translation team's plans for future works.