Persona:Moses
Mother tongue translator turned consultant
Background
Experience: 12 years experience in Old Testament translation, then 4 years experience as a translation consultant
Education: B.A. in linguistics from a Cameroonian university, B.A. in Hebrew from a South African university, during the translation process earned M.A. in theology from a South African seminary
English level: advanced; although he speaks a local language at home, he resides in a country where English is an official language, has attended school in English all his life
Level of Hebrew: has completed enough Hebrew study to look at the text in the original language, but still uses glosses and English helps
Role: Old Testament Bible translation consultant
Organization: Cameroonian Association for Bible Translation and Literacy (CABTAL)
Location: Cameroon.
Goals
His ultimate goal is to help people integrate the Scriptures into all of life. He believes that translating the Psalms into African languages will help people learn to talk to God and to engage with Him in meaningful ways.
He values local art forms. When he was working as a mother tongue translator, they specifically checked the most popular Psalms, like Psalm 23, to make sure that its translation would be singable. Now that he is a consultant, he asks the teams he works with to collect local songs with themes like joy, suffering, war, and love, which informs word choice and style as they translate Hebrew poetry.
Workflow
Interpretive process: To understand a text, he looks at it in several versions: Hebrew, with glosses and aids; several English translations; and an additional Cameroonian language that he knows. He uses a range of translation resources, including both SIL and UBS translation aids.
He really wants to understand the cultural background of the Bible, and has found illustrated resources about the Biblical world very helpful. These include depictions of the Jewish temple, farming practices, and animals that are mentioned in the Bible. Often, he thinks he sees links between his own culture and ancient Hebrew culture, but he checks carefully to see whether these are true connections.
To deal with emotions in the text, he puts himself in the shoes of the person composing the Psalm, and the emotion comes up naturally. In his community, people often spontaneously compose songs to express their emotions, which prepared him well to understand emotions in Biblical poetry.
Context for Product Use: He uses resources both for initial exegesis and for checking back translations of the Psalms for other language communities. He looks at resources when he is not sure if the translation is consistent enough with the Hebrew text. He also trains local teams to use translation resources like Translator’s Notes in Logos.
Concerns and Challenges
One of his challenges is maintaining consistency in the use of key terms, so he would like a resource that highlights key terms. For example, some Psalms are quoted in the New Testament, so he has to make sure that key terms in the translations match, whether that means updating the New Testament translation or changing the way they’ve translated the Psalm.
It can be a challenge when ancient Hebrew culture is different from his culture. For example, his community doesn’t use oxen for threshing, so he was initially confused about Paul’s instruction not to muzzle oxen when threshing. Resources on Hebrew culture help him overcome these obstacles.