Michael Boutin has been a member of Wycliffe USA since 1978. He worked in Malaysia from 1981 to 2004. He is an associate professor at Dallas International University and the Chair of the Applied Linguistics Department.
Linnea Cremean has a BA in linguistics from the University of Buffalo and is an intern at Dallas International.
Oral Recording as a Means of Checking Written Scripture
Abstract
This paper describes differences between the written and oral versions of the gospel of Mark in Bonggi, a minority language of Sabah, Malaysia.
Much has been written over the last forty years about differences between oral and written texts, including oral and written scripture translation. However, the differences described in this paper cannot be attributed to differences between written and oral translation styles because the Bonggi speakers were asked to read the text and not change it. “Merely reading aloud a text designed for a literate audience is insufficient for a truly oral translation” (Fletcher 2019). Although the oral version of Mark is a classic example of a scripted text, it contains interesting deviations from the written script. These include the use of different tense and aspect forms; different forms of the same lexeme; different lexical choices; changes in imperative constructions; differences in referring expressions (e.g., proper names being replaced by pronouns, and pronouns being replaced by zero anaphora); and differences in personal name determiners.
Besides categorizing and quantifying the differences between the oral and written text, this paper describes how the written text has been improved during the process.