Publishing Shared Readable Back Translations in Diglots: Theory and Practice in Addressing Multilingualism in a Multi-language Translation Project

The Aitape West Translation Programme (AWTP), which includes 10 languages in 3 language families in Papua New Guinea, now publishes all printed copies of their translations as diglots, with the vernacular translation in parallel with a readable back translation (BT) in the LWC, Tok Pisin.

Local church leaders believe this strategy is the most effective way to engage their multilingual communities and congregations with Scripture. Tok Pisin alone is not enough because many local people do not understand it well. Vernacular alone is not enough because many people do not understand the local language well: some have married into their village from other language communities, some are local people who have returned after living in a far-away town, and some church members live in a nearby village where a different language is spoken. Most children are multilingual. Because their translations differ exegetically and stylistically from the standard Tok Pisin translation, the translators decided they could not use it in their diglots.

Much additional work is required to prepare a BT that is of the same high quality as the translation. AWTP has partially mitigated this by deriving the readable BTs from a thoroughly consultant-checked front translation, and producing one BT that is shared by up to four translations in the same language family. For checking, consultants are given an interlinear in Paratext for each translation in addition to the shared BT for each language family.