Enhancing Community Engagement in Translation: The Development of the Multilingual Assessment Tool

The Multilingual Assessment Tool (MAT) was developed in 2021 by members of four different translation agencies, to be used primarily as a tool to facilitate conversations with church leaders and others about their own patterns of multilingualism, and how this might affect their engagement with Scripture in the local language. This can then lead to initial translation decisions. We outline some of the advantages of this approach, such as awareness raising of the relevance of multilingualism to Scripture Use. We also report on some experiences of using the tool with communities around the world. This experience has led to an updated typology of multilingualism, which we hope will lead to more useful recommendations of initial Scripture translation goals. We also compare this tool to others which are designed to help communities assess their own needs for language development and Scripture Engagement, and lay out a plan for its future use and development.