The big news is that we had the final consultant check of Luke, John and Hebrews. It took a full week of all day checking to get through this but it went very well and our consultant, Dave Brunn was pleased with quality and clarity of the translation.
Many thanks to Dave and our Dom brethren who helped us, Kapia Joseph, Bapka Raymond, Martin Giriu and Philip Tine. Jim did all the reading as Gena (our translation helper) wasn’t up to coming to the check to help with reading. Now we are working on getting Revelation ready for a final check later this year, Lord willing. Philemon will be checked, too, at that time.
After this final consultant check the Dom New Testament will be officially ready to print with the blessing of our mission leadership.
Perhaps some of you are wondering how this final consultant check works. After we have translated any portion of Scripture we check it with many Dom believers for clarity and good grammar. We make improvements accordingly. Then we translate the Dom text of Scripture back into English in a somewhat literal but readable form. This back translation (BT as we call it) is then sent to a consultant to read and get an idea of how we translated Scripture into Dom.
The consultants are all veteran translators of the New Testament in the tribal languages where they have worked. The consultant then will send his or her comments and suggestions for correction or improvement. A date is set for a face to face check. During that check we employ the help of Dom people, usually Christians, to help. So around the table is Jim with the Dom text of Scripture, the consultant with his/her BT and our Dom friends. Jim reads from Dom as our Dom helpers listen.
Then they give it back in Tok Pisin which is the common language of PNG. The consultant who also knows Tok Pisin listens and evaluates their response to what is read from Dom. He may ask questions for clarification, offer suggestions etc. Every word of the Dom translation is checked in this way. After which we are free to have it printed.
It took a full week of this procedure to check through Luke, John and Hebrews. We were pretty exhausted by the end.