Deliverables benefiting the translation directly

1. A 5-10 page overview of features of the target language which differ from those of the source texts (whether Greek, Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, etc.) that are important for translators to be aware of. This document will point to a longer grammar sketch, where more detail can be found about the issues, as needed by the translation team or linguistics and translation consultants.

2. Well-trained translation teams through collaborating over a longer stretch of time with linguists. This ensures that their grammar is understood and incorporated into the Bible translation.

3. A non-technical grammar sketch in a language accessible to the translation team.

Deliverables for other stakeholders

A comprehensive grammar, where the capacity is available. Such grammars serve as a reference for consultants and new linguists working with the team, and are of significant help to projects in related languages.

Accessible material about the grammatical makeup of one’s language will improve the cohesion of translated texts. This helps translators understand the main differences of structure in the target language, as compared with the source languages. Such materials also help make the value and distinctness of the language evident to members of the community and to outsiders.

Switch Reference in Sheko

In an Omotic language in Ethiopia, the Bible translation team was not aware that their language was operating with a switch-reference system: in dependent clauses speakers normally don't use personal pronouns such as "he", "she" and "they", but markers that clarify whether the following clause has the same subject as the preceding clause, or a different one. So the translators had translated all source-language pronouns with the equivalent pronouns of their language, which resulted in almost incomprehensible texts that sounded as if ever new participants constantly entered the discourse. When a new exegetical advisor joined the team, she read in a published grammar about the switch-reference system of the language and discussed it with the translators. They agreed that this indeed made the texts much more natural, and they were instantly willing to redo the whole previously translated portions. Without the linguistic input the translators were not consciously aware of this very different structure of their language compared with the various source languages they used.

Yagua primer that “yelled”. (Doris Payne)

Genesis 1: Multiple gods

Mike Bryant reports: "When a new translator joined the Suri translation project (in Ethiopia), he was confused by the creation story in Genesis 1 which had been translated a few years earlier. Like in the Hebrew original, the Suri translation used the noun Tumu 'God' in each new day of the creation - 'and then Tumu created...' But repeating the noun in this way in Suri heavily implies that the subject changes each time, so the new translator understood this text to mean that each day a different Tumu was creating a part of the world, with the implication that the Bible states that there is not one, but several gods. Only when the word Tumu was removed in all but the first days of the creation, so that only the pronominal marking on the verb remained, was it clear that it was always the same 'God' who did all the creation, and the heretical misunderstanding was no longer possible."

Connectors in Arringa (Helga Schröder)

Conjugation ambiguity (yes/no, “you should praise the Lord, you shouldn’t praise the Lord)