Orally translating
The story that we call "Ruth"
Most of the people in the world communicate by means of speaking and they learn by means of listening. Most of them are able to remember many concepts that they hear in one session; and they can tell them out when they are asked. They can remember long speeches. They also can think through problems well. They can find solutions.
God has chosen to communicate his message to the people in all times through his human prophets. When we communicate that message today by human voices in the audio media, we are simulating the action of Apostles as they have passed the message to us. Our humanness helps the listeners to accept the message as true. It helps them to consider themselves as learners from the Apostles.
People in all socienties tell stories. Sometimes we tell stories to help each other pass the time, as people do at funerals or as they are traveling on a journey. Sometimes we tell stories to help others to continue working when they must do a certain task over and over. Sometimes our stories are in the form of a song or a chant. Sometimes we tell stories to help others to forget for a short time their troubles or to forget their tiredness from hard work. We could call that kind of story-telling “entertainment” or “amusement.” Thus, the people will listen to your story about Ruth primarily as an amusement. But we hope that they will also learn about human faithfulness and God’s care for people.
The team will be telling the story about Ruth in their own language. They will be telling it to their own people. The people will like to listen to the story if only because they want to hear stories in their language. When they hear stories in their language, they feel more comfortable because they know that their language is valuable and worthwhile. They can feel stronger because someone is recording stories in their language.
We tell stories in order help others understand a teaching. The team will be telling the story of Ruth in order to help their people understand that God truly takes care of his people. An example of God’s providing is his giving Naomi a grandson to care for her, as well God’s causing Boaz to marry Ruth.
Bible translators now recognize that many people will never learn to read in any language. They are hampered by age, poor eyesight, the struggle for survival and by their cultural views. Many could learn but will never feel sufficiently motivated. Many know how to read but prefer to learn only by listening.
This approach to communicating the Scriptures is developed with the Bible translator of the 21st century:
- That translator will be working in his or her mother language.
- That translator will be working with laptop computers, probably powered by solar-panels.
- That translator will utilize recording equipment at the level of his expertise and budget.
- That translator will utilize audio distribution devices available to him or her.
Those who have developed the storying approach have disseminated a biblical environment for laying a ground-work for evangelism. They have also given us opportunity to learn about the effectiveness of an audio message, especially in pre-literate societies. The audio message communicates to the present generation, while the literacy programs are developing.
Several translation programs have demonstrated the advantage of increased ability of the translators to communicate clearly and naturally the message by their creating an audio recording before developing a written text.
Many translation teams are now recording their printed text into an audio media. They are doing it because they realize that most of the people in the groups will probably never learn to read and everyone learns from the messages they hear.
There are several benefits foreseeable with the first communication of Scripture being in audio-media:
- This program can help a team produce Scriptures for their language even though the alphabet is still being developed.
- A publication in audio-media will communicate to non-literates early in the life of the program, within weeks of its initiation.
- The audio-media will have a special effectiveness because of its naturalness. Naturalness facilitates the listeners’ decision-making faculties. An audio message communicates in ways that require minimum mental processing on the part of the listeners, whereas reading requires several mental processes.
- The listeners are likely to feel an obligation to accept and act on information that comes to them through their ears. An obligation that a person hears is likely to repeat itself in the mind of the hearer. On the other hand, it is easy for a person to postpone a decision to act when he or she is reading a document.
- The cost of recording equipment is now affordable. The editing programs are now much less complex.
- The audio-media products are less likely to be confiscated by hostile parties than printed media.
- There is a natural desire in people to listen to someone telling new ideas. Thus un-evangelized people are drawn to the message.
- If there are more than one dialect in a language group, an audio recording in one dialect can be intelligible to people of more of than single dialect. It can be somewhat effective until recordings are viable for the other dialects. An audio recording in a central dialect might spark interest in other dialects in developing their own recordings.
