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Harry Harm - GSLT
(June 2024)
Harry Harm - GSLT
(June 2024)
How did you get interested in Bible translation? After high school I worked for 3 years as a longshoreman, loading and unloading ships in Baltimore's harbour. I was unloading a banana boat when God spoke to me telling me to go to university and major in Greek. I majored in Classical Greek at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County but I had no clue what I would do with my Greek knowledge. Then a Wycliffe couple visited my InterVarsity Group to talk about Bible translation and they mentioned the translation process and translation consultants. I knew then that God wanted me to become a translation consultant. Making that come true took me 18 more years.
What is your consulting philosophy?
1) When I write up notes for translation teams I include 4 kinds of notes and give translators choices and encouragement.
$$$ - commenting on something good in their translation
*** - what I see in the back translation is wrong
** - there may be a mistake here so let's talk about it
* - what you have is fine but here is another idea you can consider
2) People and relationships are more important than complete accuracy.
3) I do not know everything. I usually accept an exegetical choice made by a team even if I do not like it if they have support from major translations and/or commentaries.
Can you share about a time when you realised you were wrong and what you learned from it? I was checking a language spoken in the Middle East. The translation described an agricultural practice in a way that I thought was an error. I wrote up the "mistake" in the translation. This was a mistake on my part. The translator was from a rural Middle Eastern setting. I was from an American suburb. The translator had a PhD in agricultural economics. To this day I think that my view is correct. My error was to disagree with his view. Fortunately, I soon realised my mistake and changed my opinion before any damage was done to our working relationship.
What do you see as the place of the church in Bible translation? I have always been a bit suspicious of parachurch organisations. Our first translation project was church based, owned by the Choctaw churches: Assemblies of God, Baptist, Catholic, Mennonite, Methodist, Pentecostal Church of God and Charismatic. I have consulted for projects run by the following churches - Anglican (Egypt), Orthodox (Macedonia) and Catholic (Slovakia). SIL GSLT does not own any translation projects. Many of them are owned by local Deaf organisations, often with churches represented on their boards.
Any other comments? I like challenges. Two of my recent challenges involve DeafBlind and neurodiverse groups. How does one translate a Bible in a tactile modality? How does one record it? How would it be published? How can neurodiverse people be involved in translation? What adjustments in translation and publishing can be made to make translations more understandable and accessible?
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