Working for the Word - a Bible translation podcast

As I said in the last episode, I’ve been working on the Selling Jesus project, which is now well underway with a ton of content. Please check out the website sellingJesus.org and you’ll find enough reading material to keep you busy all Christmas vacation. Also, it would mean the world to me if you would help boost the views of the first Selling Jesus video on YouTube, which is on the homepage of sellingJesus.org, and share it around. I’ll be releasing the next long video in the series soon, so make sure you’re subscribed to the YouTube channel. Selling Jesus is also a podcast, so if you’d rather listen to the articles on the website, you can do that on the podcast. There’s already a lot of content on there, and we post more every week. In this episode I’m highlighting the ministry of Pioneer Bible Translators, and I’m joined by Tim MacSaveny who was kind enough to share the ins and outs of his organization. My hope is that this will be helpful for those who don’t know much about PBT and want to find out more, especially those who are trying to navigate the differences between all the BT orgs and decide who to join. Tim is married to Erin, they have four kids, and they’ve served with PBT since 2008. Currently they live in Louisville, KY. Tim and Erin facilitate Bible translation for two projects in two different countries. The first is a people group living in southeastern Tanzania. Tim travels to Tanzania three times a year to meet face-to-face with the translation team, while working remotely throughout the year. The second project involves a diaspora group who have experienced significant tribal and political attacks in their home area of eastern Congo. Many of them now live in the US. This project is currently being hosted at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, where the MacSavenys now live. Tim and Erin, along with their children Rose, Everett, Julian, and Lucy, have served with Pioneer Bible Translators since 2008.  tim.macsaveny@pbti.org Visit https://pioneerbible.org/ to find out more. workingfortheword.com⁠ | ⁠my books⁠ | ⁠twitter⁠ |⁠ music⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠Hebrew ⁠| ⁠academic articles⁠ | ⁠facebook⁠ | ⁠contact⁠ | ⁠download all episodes for offline

This episode will just be a brief announcement that I’ll be taking some time away from this podcast in order to focus on some other important things right now. I may be posting sporadically, but I’m not sure how often. There are a lot of episodes I’d like to do in the future. Please visit sellingJesus.org and also help spread this video far and wide. Book mentioned: God and Mammon by Noll Song at the end with lyrics and subtitles workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

MA in Bible Translation from Nida Institute: https://www.nidaschool.org/ma-bible-translation Seed Company Residency Program: https://seedcompany.com/residency/ Wycliffe's convergence program for training consultants: https://www.wycliffe.org/blog/posts/6-ways-convergence-will-prepare-you-to-become-a-translation-consultant Word for the World's training programs: https://training.twftw.org/ Mekane Yesus Seminary: https://mekaneyesusseminary.org/ SIL Translation CiT Funding Guidelines: Is a current SIL staff member Is already an approved Translation CiT with their OU – have a mentor, a growth plan, and have begun their mentored checking training Is within their last two years of their Translation CiT program – ie, within two years of starting this program they will become approved as a Translation Consultant Have approval to enter this program from their OU Administration (supervisor) and their OU Translation Coordinator Upon becoming a Translation Consultant, they commit to working 0.5 FTE (50%) of their time as a Translation Consultant for at least five years Authors/ contributors are needed for two Translation Resources projects currently underway - Bamboo TN (Translator's Notes) and KTOT (Key Terms of the Old Testament). If you are interested in working part-time with either of these projects, email Brian Migliazza for further information. Contact Phil King: phil_king@sil.org Contact Brian Migliazza: brian_migliazza@sil.org News from Jerusalem about John Mark's lawsuits by Don Lowe. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

This episode is going to be a little different and more informal. My wife, Bethany, and I had a really great conversation the other day about interlinears and their different uses for second language acquisition, as well as the subject of reader's bibles. So we decided to record a second version of it to share, because we hope there are some helpful things we can add to people's thinking about these things and the general discussion of second language acquisition. If I said anything valuable in this episode, it probably came from my wise and brilliant wife in our first conversation! And for those of you who are unfamiliar with our Hebrew learning channel, you can learn more at freehebrew.online. This video explains a little more about the BART Bible app that provides a free Hebrew Reader's Bible reading experience, but better, without having to look down at footnotes. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

In this episode we continue our conversation with Dr. Alan Bunning, Executive Director for the Center for New Testament Restoration. Check out the project overview. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

When people think about starting a translation of the NT, they usually need to decide which Greek text they’re going to use as a source text. Unlike OT translation where everyone defaults to the MT, there are more than one NT source texts to choose from, like the UBS, the Nestle-Aland, the Byzantine text, the Textus-Receptus and others. And some of the modern, popular ones are locked down by copyright. So over the course of the next two episodes I want to introduce you to someone who is innovating in this field, and trying to serve the Church with a transparent critical Greek text that everyone can use without any hindrance. Alan Bunning received his education in New Testament Greek from the Kensington Theological Academy under the tutelage of Dr. David R. Dilling, and received his D.Litt. degree for his work done in textual criticism. Alan’s primary background is in computer science and after working in the industry for many years, he became a college professor working as an Assistant Professor in Computer Information Systems at Ivy Tech Community College and then was a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Purdue University. Alan retired from Purdue University in 2020 and now devotes himself to working full time as the Executive Director for the Center for New Testament Restoration. Make sure to read the project overview, especially section 2.2. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Back in 2021 an article entitled Just How Broken Is the Bible Translation Industry? came out on MinistryWatch. People keep asking me what I think about it. I've waited a long time to let the organizations critiqued in the article have a chance to speak for themselves and respond to the article, but they never did. This episode is my summary and thoughts on the article, and an encouragement to the leaders of the big BT orgs to set the record straight and clarify any misunderstandings that might exist.  The MAP forum post and responses mentioned. illumiNations A note written by me on the forum: Regarding raising a child: it's a good point, and most people would say that raising children well doesn't cost millions of dollars. In fact, if you introduce too much money into raising a child, you'll probably ruin your child. I wonder if that's the concern in this article. If I went around to churches telling them that I needed to raise 10 million dollars to raise my kid well, I would only raise eyebrows. I think that may be the message coming across to many like the author: that Bible translation is no longer just hard; now it's exorbitantly expensive. I think military spending may be a good analogy here. I learned yesterday that if one toilet gets clogged on the new US aircraft carriers, it costs $400,000 to unclog it. So the question is: should it really cost that much? We all know that BT has a high cost in energy, time, stress, trauma, etc., and that should be expected. But our orgs usually require us to de-emphasize those costs and give a chipper façade to donors. All the donors see is the marketing and begging for high dollar amounts, without understanding where it's going. So it's no wonder people might start to suspect that it's being thrown at ridiculously expensive ways to "unclog toilets."  Is Bible translation spending money for the sake of spending money in some areas? Are they raising money for job security because they don't know what else they would do? As long as donors are ignored and not given clear answers to these questions, we remain suspect and a target to more articles like this one.  In my experience, the big orgs ignore these kinds of articles and leave everyone with question marks, instead of humbly and clearly responding with wisdom and detailed honesty.  I can only pray that leaders take this seriously and actually respond publicly instead of hiding behind silence. I would genuinely welcome any leader to come on my podcast "Working for the Word" and respond to this article. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Raised in the jungles of Venezuela by missionary parents in a vibrant Christian home, Tabitha Price is well-acquainted with the challenges of Christian ministry. Tabitha married her high school sweetheart, Joel, and together they attended New Tribes Bible college in preparation for missionary service. After that, she earned a bachelor degree from Southwest Bible College and Seminary and spent eight years teaching at international mission schools first in Venezuela and later in Florida. She is a graduate of Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary (Master’s in Ministry), and has completed a doctorate in Executive Leadership. Tabitha has served with Wycliffe Associates since 2009 in a variety of ministries. She was privileged to be part of the first MAST translation event and has since taught translation principals and theory to hundreds of translators in countries all over the world. Today Tabitha serves as the Vice President of Translation Services leading teams who are training our partners in church owned Bible translation. Tabitha and her husband Joel have three children, Marshall, Jaden and Roman. They call Central Florida home. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

ChatGPT is considered by some to be the biggest technological revolution since the iPhone. In this episode we take it for a spin to see what it knows about Bible translation and test the limits of its expertise regarding more challenging biblical studies. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Now that we’ve learned more about internalization from Katie Frost, it’s time to talk about a new tool that recently came out for actually doing oral Bible translation projects. It’s called Audio Project Manager, and it’s a free program that anyone can download and start working with right away. Nathan Payne is going to walk us through what the software does and how it can be leveraged for oral projects.  I’ve worked with Render for a while now and it still has a lot of drawbacks. One of the biggest ones is that it’s not freely available, and you have to jump through a ton of hoops to get access to it. The interface has a lot of annoying quirks, especially for consultants, and it has very little flexibility. This is where Audio Project Manager comes in to give people a better option with much more flexibility and freedom. Nathan Payne who is going to help us understand the software, was born in Peru to missionary Bible translators who worked in the jungle with the Asheninka people. He met his wife, Katy, in high school, and attended Texas A&M university where he studied chemical engineering. He and his wife later studied linguistics after feeling called to Bible translation. After some fieldwork, he moved into a training and consulting role for storying projects. A few years later he became the SIL Americas Area Storying and Orality Coordinator. And in 2020 became the SIL Oral Translation Services coordinator, giving direction to the organization’s involvement in Storying, OBT and other oral strategies. He currently serves as director of the Oral English Bible Translation (Spoken English Bible) and Oral Exegetical Tools project. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline