What gets you excited when you work with others in Bible translation? Working with others is always an opportunity to learn and also to impact others both cognitively and devotionally. There is mutual encouragement, discerning the right choices is easier. I share the value of community and togetherness and believe the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts and working with others is working in community. The social and spiritual returns of working with others are always greater.

What is your consulting philosophy? Missions undergird all that I do in Bible translation. And I remind myself each time I am in front of a translation team about the missional intent of translation. Each translation project and each community is different. I see myself as a facilitator trying to guide, to inspire translators to make the right choices that would help achieve a translation that is accurate, natural and clear and the purposes for which it was intended. In doing so, I encourage that each translation project should come up with a translation brief which paints the roadmap for me and others as I facilitate the team in taking the right translation decisions. I try to be very descriptive and avoid being prescriptive. Mine is an approach of friendship with the translation team, avoiding to see myself as an expert and seeking to be very thorough.

What translation resources do you really value? I have not consulted in the past few years but the key resource for me are the resources in Paratext. Every available resource is always valued, especially the commentaries, exegetical resources, translators' notes and Bible versions etc.

How do you share your translation discoveries with others? So far, it's been done in translation conferences or gatherings. I intentionally encourage peer mentoring - thus a one-to-one sharing of discoveries also. 

Can you share about a time when you realized you were wrong and what you learned from it? There are always a plethora of options to be taken for some translation decisions. Some of them have strong reasons and some of them can be minority views. I can't remember a situation where I was outrightly wrong  but there are situations where I might have taken a minority opinion or an opinion that may not align well in a particular context because of some historical or social reasons. I worked on the Gospel of Luke with a language community here in Cameroon. As we translated Luke chapter two and Matthew chapter one (story of the birth of Jesus), we transliterated the German term "Kaisser". The translators had argued that the translation of this title could be given to Jesus "where is he who is born Kaisser of the Jews" because the word was familiar to people because the colonization of Cameroon took place by the king of Germany. Later on we had to change this title for some reasons: 1) the title was not used by the kings of Germany before 1870, 2) we had used "Fon" the local word for king in another place in the translation and for consistency we had to change, 3) anything to do with colonization had some  political overtones that did not augur well in some quarters. So with this evidence we went back to change our term. Was I initially wrong, not necessarily! But the lesson learnt here for me is that translation is cyclical, we need to always review, revisit our decisions when we get inspired along the way. That is one reason why we have revisions of translation. And we need to always admit our epistemological limitations and thus have to consult with peers and translators of whom we are not sure of. It's teamwork from beginning to the end.

What are your top tips for someone starting on a career path in Bible translation? Be thorough and listen in between the lines. There is more wisdom in the community and amongst the translators than may be perceived and it takes keen listening, a posture of learning and humbly receiving and giving feedback to tap from this. It takes interaction within the translation project area to discern meaning. Make friendship a value and an approach to ministry.

Share something that you learned from a mentor or from a mentee? I think my answer above speaks about some of my learnings, some of them from mentors.

What do you see as the place of the church in Bible translation? Bible translation is part of the mission of God. The church is God's instrument for missions in the world. I am doing Bible translation as part of a mission. The Bible is the book of the church. There are some churches that have a department of translation and so they do translation directly.  And there are also specialized organizations doing translation and I think in a sense they belong or are part of the church. That bond is there overtly or implicitly, talked about or silent. I am a translator and I promote the translation of the Bible because of being a Christian. Having said that, let me zoom in to say I would like to see the local church spearheading Scripture Engagement in the community. I would like to see the local church involved in decision making of a translation project, influencing the choice of the translators, providing resources - be they human, church property or financial resources to promote translation.

What would you say to young/ aspiring translators? To every aspiring translator, I would like to tell you that you are on missions and that you are called to handle the Word of God. That calls for humility, for diligence, and dependence on God. This also calls for accountability in the community and some kind of vulnerability. And it is a joy to handle the Word of God and a wonderful thing to be remembered as one who was involved in bringing the Word of God to his/her people. This is a fulfilling ministry and it requires patience.