Bible translation requires focus

  

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As Bible translation is a technical task that should only be undertaken by a by a well-trained work force, it stands to reason that its success can only be assured when it is entrusted to a specialized agency, or to a specialized department within a more general agency. This is like when we need medical help for our teeth or for our eyes. We'd rather not go to a general practitioner for this, but make an appointment with a certified dentist (or eye doctor, respectively) from the outset. Certainly we would not go to a veterinary who puts a sign "also fix human teeth" in his window, or to a department store. There may be a hospital with a specialized dentistry unit, and that would also qualify to meet our needs. We do this because we know that healing teeth is complicated and difficult enough that only credible specialists will do.

This trust in specialists has a flip side. Would we happily approach a certified dentist when the following information is known to us? This dentist only occasionally works on human teeth; instead, most of his time he spends between his golf course, his philanthropic club and the office of a political party, where he serves as the district secretary. Most of the income of his clinic is generated by its being the scenery of toothpaste advertisements, and by a lot of profitable cosmetic surgery done by the employees of the dentist. We would justifiably conclude that the dentist has become a little bit too distracted by other things to still be reliably good as a dentist.

The same may happen to organizations doing Bible translation. If an organization was founded for this very purpose, then it needs to take great care that it doesn't lose its focus on this task. It can happen in a number of ways.

Expansion pressures

Expansion pressures make themselves felt when an agency and its people get confused by its so-called "vision statement" and treat it like its mission. This happens to the best of them, as it is really difficult to keep these concepts straight in organizational development. Since the 1990s companies and non-profit organizations have been recommended to develop strong statements that guide their strategic thinking. The first of such statements, the mission statement, is quite straightforward in its scope, and in what it provides for the organization – it defines its purpose in terms of what an organization does, and who for. The second statement, the vision statement, is less focused on the present, but more on the future, a desired future to which the work of the organization contributes. Vision statement crafters for Bible translation organizations have been rather bold in the past decades, painting a picture of a glorious future which sees nothing less than everyone (and their brother) flourishing in practically every aspect of their lives.

There is nothing wrong with that, as long as everybody remembers that the vision statement is pronounced to provide a long-term context for the work defined in the mission statement, a lasting impact to which the mission offers a contribution. But vision and mission statements rarely come with an instruction manual, and when you have a very broadly painted vision statement, more and more decision makers over time mistake it for the organization's real purpose and start working towards this future not just within the guardrails of the mission statement, but from all possible other angles that would need to be addressed if that future is ever going to materialize.

Now, if the vision statement envisions "flourishing communities" in the future, decision makers may then be tempted to think that communities cannot possibly be flourishing if material poverty is not addressed, if environmental degradation is not taken care of, if harmful practices are not pushed back, if corrupt structures are not broken up, if gender equality is not achieved, if medical care is not dramatically improved. Then they look at what the organization does, and to their great alarm they notice that it does not do anything in particular to contribute to such a future except Bible translation! At this stage, new ideas are being developed to close this apparent gap in reaching the vision, and if they indeed get implemented, this organization has probably lost some focus and experiences mission drift.

I now quickly need to add that these decision makers are absolutely right in their analysis that the envisioned future of a bold and broad vision statement will indeed stay out of reach if nobody is going to address all these problems. But they are mistaken in the idea that it is the Bible translation organization's job to do this. This job is rather defined in the mission statement (if this is indeed more than just a vaguely worded free-for-all), and the organization should stick to this narrow contribution to not lose its focus.

Pressured by money

Since they exist, Bible translation organizations struggle to get their work funded, a work that usually comes at considerable financial cost. The traditional funding models, centered around the partnership development work of the individual missionaries, were quite reliable over time, but they left little margin for extraordinary expenses, such as the funding needed to run a literacy campaign. This is where project funding came in: the organizations marketed such extra expenses as attractive donation opportunities for wealthy or institutional donors, and these thankfully closed many gaps by giving generously. But they also let their preferences be known as to what kind of project they would really be excited about. Over time the organizations learned what activity was sure to attract funds, and projects were therefore packaged in ways that they looked more like such opportunities.

In combination with the mission drift caused by expansion pressures, this money-driven incentive led to more and more projects that had little to do with the original core business of Bible translation, as some of the additional activities were indeed hitting a nerve with the public and with the donors. Once larger amounts of money and resources are thrown at an organization to do things that are not reeeaaallly part of the organization's portfolio, it is very difficult for the organizational decision makers to step in and call a halt to such proceedings. Most of the stakeholders around such a scenario would not understand why something should not be done if everybody loves it, everybody understands its importance, and money is given freely to get it done.

As an example, I'd like to mention here a project that is well-known in translation circles: Trauma Healing (TH). This came up as a timely response to genuine needs that arose in Bible translation projects for communities that were ravaged by severe conflicts marked by immense physical and psychological trauma. TH was a way to prepare translation teams to work in such environments, and without such intervention most likely the translation projects would have had no basis to succeed. These TH interventions were truly successful, and they contributed to the language development goals of the communities, as they added to the body of literature available in the language. All in all, this contributed fully to the organizational Bible translation goals, and it was a fine example for how a translation project could contribute to the flourishing of a community.

This success, though, created a new branch of work in Bible translation organizations where this TH concept was applied to more and more situations, some in local languages, and more in languages of wider communication. As the need to do so was apparent in many countries, it was not difficult to attract funding, which in turn funneled more personnel and resources into Trauma Healing. Over the past decade or so, this has become a major leg to stand on for some organizations. In a country I know well, a large number of staff are now engaged in this, and most of the work is happening in the major languages of the country. Since the work is so popular among the national churches, so necessary for intrinsic reasons, and so well-funded, nobody ever stops and thinks whether this is something that a Bible translation organization should do.

So what? What is wrong with this?

Why indeed should a Bible translation not do something that everybody wants it to do and that is amply resourced? The reason has to do with focus, the theme of this entry.

If a Bible translation organization sticks to its stated purpose (or mission), it will form a team of specialists who are trained to fulfill this mission – quality Bible translations. They will have a range of skills and the required knowledge to succeed in this. Bible translation is in itself already a holistic endeavor, as it needs progress on a number of fronts: Bible translation as such, linguistics, anthropological understanding, literacy, education, training, local resourcing. A number of various expert roles are therefore required, and they need to be kept at their task to make the organization succeed in their mission.

If a new activity is taken on, as happened in the case of TH, the initial idea is usually developed by people of the original organizational skill-pool, and it fits into the original purpose of the organization. But once it takes on its own life, two things will happen: First, the new organizational direction will draw experts from the original task set to the new set, so that they can no longer contribute to the core mission. And second, further staff are required to professionalize the new activity, as it is often seen that the originally available skill set is not sufficient to become really good at doing the new thing. The more successful the new activity is, the more it will expand the organization into a direction that is not its core business.

If an organization grows around its fringes and shrinks in the core, mission drift is almost inevitable. There will be a growing number of people who don't understand the processes and best practices of the core business. Resource administrators of the organization will find themselves attracted to the new activities, as they bring in a large portion of the available funds and indeed may even account for a large part of the administration's growth over the years. Future administrators and decision makers will grow out of the new activities, and organizational decision making will largely center around making the new activities more successful, while ever less energy is expended on the core business. In the end the new-activity tail is wagging the dog, and I think we see a lot of this in the current situation.

The flipside to all these considerations is that there are usually organizations, often even local churches, who in the long run would be much better placed to pursue the activities that encroach on the portfolio of Bible translation organizations. When it comes to promoting existing scripture translations, in the traditional division of labor this was left to local churches or other organizations such as the Scripture Union. They attract the right kind of specialists that are needed to succeed in this line of work, and they are usually quite different people from those that are needed for successful Bible translation. Translation organizations should therefore become much more rigorous in asking what kind of scripture engagement activity is indeed necessary to be done in and around the translation project, and which activity should be left for the church or specialized partners. Strategic abandonment is an organizational necessity to keep the focus on the main priority.

This is not just a matter of not stepping on other organizations' or churches' toes, but a matter of professional ethics. If my organization does not have the best skillset and knowledge to do a certain activity, it may turn out to do more harm than good. I certainly observe this when orthographies are developed by well-meaning but untrained people from organizations who don't usually do this complex task – such orthographies often come with severe, but entirely avoidable problems. This should teach me to not dabble in other professional areas for which I am not trained myself and where I don't understand all the complexities.

So far I have written mostly about scripture-engagement type activities that may distract from good focus in Bible translation, but it would not be fair to name only those. Also, linguistic activities have played their part, for example when the language-endangerment movement stirred up the linguistic world and many Bible translators felt that they would have to contribute to the fight against language death by channeling resources and time into language documentation efforts for languages that nobody ever planned a translation for. In other situations, Bible translators got side-tracked by setting up grain banks, by building irrigation dams, by developing Sunday-school curricula, or by running local clinics.

Of course, there is a time when an organization may realize that its original goals are either already reached or no longer attainable. Instead of shutting down, the organization may then wish to redefine its purpose or mission, coming up with new things to do – this is entirely legitimate. But has the worldwide Bible translation movement already reached such a point or has come anywhere near it? Has the time come to transfer as organizations from Bible translation to scripture engagement? 

Remember that the founder of the modern Bible translation movement, Cameron Townsend, left the scripture engagement work in Central America he was assigned to because he realized that too many people in the world could not benefit from scripture unless it was translated into their languages. Have we now, a hundred years later, reached a situation where this is no longer true? Looking at what is going on right now, I conclude that countless languages still do not have a Bible translation. Many of the translations recently finished or currently under way will have to be redone because of quality issues. The remaining languages without a Bible are also often those with the lowest education levels in their communities, and therefore with the highest need for intensive training of translators. In many countries the capacity of the national consultant corps is not anywhere near the point where things can just be handed over to the local churches. Linguistic input is currently at an all-time low in modern Bible translation history, and the capacity for it is dwindling.

There is therefore no indication that this is the right time for the Bible translation movement to diversify its focus into other activities that take away resources, people and funds from Bible translation. Organizations that place all their focus and energy on quality Bible translation are as much needed as they were in Cam Townsend's time. Current translation organizations need to realize and accept that they are indispensable for the success of the task, and that they cannot afford to lose focus. Where they have done so already, they need to return to their original center of gravity and redouble their effort on what is needed most, now and in the foreseeable future.