The Word for the World Training program seeks to develop the relevant attitudes, skills and knowledge needed for mother-tongue translators to successfully answer God’s call on their lives.
The attitudes include:
- A deep reverence for God’s word and its power to transform lives.
- A deep desire to communicate the message of scripture as accurately as possible based on an awareness that the real measure for quality of a translation is the ease and accuracy which his/her own people can understand the message of the scriptures.
- A growing appreciation of the receptor language as the trainee translator discovers more and more of its versatility and powerful potential for expressing God’s word in a meaningful way.
- A conviction that translation is teamwork and an ability to work harmoniously with other members of the team. This includes the ability and willingness to evaluate his contribution to the work of the team and to develop abilities that are needed.
The skills and knowledge include:
- An awareness of common problems in the process of Bible translation and ways to address and solve such problems.
- A clear understanding of the translation process from first draft to publication and use in church and beyond (including an awareness of the need for checking, testing and improvement of draft translations).
- An understanding of the principles of a good spelling system and an ability to write down the receptor language accurately according to the established spelling system.
- An awareness of the grammar and discourse features of the receptor language and how they are different from the source language.
- An increasing ability to study the source text and discover the meaning of the passage accurately.
- An awareness of different genres and other stylistic features such as direct and indirect speech in the receptor language and the source language.
- The preparation of candidates for a long-term future in the field of Bible translation including leadership and passing on gained expertise to new candidates.