Soul of a Man

What Goes Into Translating the Audio Bible

Did you know that most of the people in the world cannot read? We take free, public education in the United States for granted sometimes, but with it does come the opportunity for public literacy learning. This is unfortunately not the case worldwide, where political conflicts and poverty take a toll on the educational needs of citizens of other countries. When it comes to reading the Bible, therefore, there are many in the world that simply do not have the skills to do so. There is a solution to this problem, however, and that is the introduction of the audio Bible.

The translation process has been brought to the King James audio Bible, for example, bringing the wonders of modern technology to bear on the problem of sharing God’s Word in a way that all can understand. The NIV audio Bible, as well as the King James audio Bible have been downloaded onto a CD that uses mp3 files to compress the entire New Testament so that it fits on a single CD. People can then listen to the audio Bible and even conduct audio Bible Study groups using this fantastic audio version of the Bible. Of course, there are thousands of different languages spoken around the world, so how is Bible translation work done so that all listeners can understand what is being said on the CD?

There are several groups whose purpose is to translate the Bible so that everyone in the world will be able to read or hear it in their own language. Wycliffe Bible Translators is one such group. They take a scholarly, linguistic approach to Bible translation. Linguists are sent into the field to work with a people group whose language has never been written down before. These linguists work with native speakers to document a language’s phonetics, phonology, syntax and grammar. After this painstaking research, they apply what they have learned to translating the Bible into this newly recorded language.

Phonetics refers to the sounds of a particular language. The human voice can make many sounds, yet not all of them are used for language production. The linguist’s job is to listen well and document each of the individual sounds used in the particular language, in a way that is verifiable and repeatable by all speakers.

Phonology has to do with how the various sounds identified phonetically function within the language. The linguist will work, after gaining phonetic data out in the field, to identify what the phonemes, or the smallest unit of speech that characterizes meaning, of the language are.

Syntax is the study of sentence structure, and grammar is a listing of the rules that apply to the structure of sentences. Wycliffe, and other Bible translation organizations, apply linguistic standards to the study of languages that have never been written before, and then apply what they have learned to Bible translation. Some of these organizations have also partnered with audio Bible production groups, so that the Bible is now available in languages that many of the world’s speakers can understand.

About the Author

Susan Slobac studies language and translations and is fascinated with the Audio Bible. Susan uses the the audio Bible on CD and has listened to different tranlsations of the King james audio Bible. She encourages friends within her church to reach out to other non-native speakers with audio Bible translations.

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