The Journey Podcast – Ep. 11 Transcript

A conversation with Evelyn Gan about oral Bible translation

Phil Prior

From the Wycliffe Global Alliance. Hello and welcome again to The Journey Podcast. I’m Phil Prior, director for communication for the Alliance. And with me, as always, is Jim Killam, our managing editor. Jim, we both spent a few days in Kenya recently with Alliance leaders discussing what we see God doing in the Bible translation world and how to respond with strategies, funding and such.

Jim Killam

Yeah, one of the people we got to spend time with in Kenya was Evelyn Gan. Evelyn is with Wycliffe Malaysia and she serves as the Alliance’s consultant for oral translation programs. That’s a relatively new role in the Alliance. Evelyn has been doing some cross-cultural training in OBT — that’s our shorthand for oral Bible translation. And there’s some excitement around the world as communities are realizing how well this is being received, especially in communities that tend to process and learn orally rather than through written words.

Phil Prior

 Yeah, and there are several approaches to OBT, as you will see, not only in this interview, but also in the accompanying stories we’ve just published on Wycliffe.net. For some communities, OBT is being found as the most effective way for people to receive and internalise Scripture, even more so than reading it. Internalise, obviously, means that it becomes truly part of your heart and mind, rather than just words on a page. While in other communities, OBT has been an effective starting point for receiving God’s Word. But there is also a desire to include literacy and written Scripture in the projects.

Jim Killam

Yeah, it’s really about local churches and communities determining what they need, rather than anyone coming in from outside and dictating that. It’s important to realize, though, that for most of human history, oral learning has been the norm.

Phil Prior

So in this interview, Evelyn talks about how God is using oral Bible translation and why it’s working so well. It’s a really good introduction for anyone not familiar with OBT, and it may also spark some creative ideas for communities, churches and organisations.

Jim Killam

One little disclaimer—we recorded the interview outdoors in the late afternoon, so you will hear some of the sounds of Kenya in the background. That includes a rooster that would just not give up through that week. So please forgive those minor distractions, but maybe they even add a little something to the topic and to the atmosphere around the interview.

Phil Prior

So here then is our conversation with Evelyn.

Jim Killam

Evelyn, thanks for doing this. Here we are in Kenya together at an Alliance leadership meeting that you and I normally aren’t attending, but it’s been fun to have you here and fun for me to be here. Could you explain your title and then what your role is in the Alliance?

Evelyn Gan

That’s a hard one. I’m the consultant for oral translation programmes. It’s a pretty new role, so I guess there’s a need for someone to be talking about it, to be finding out more about it, to be encouraging teams that are doing it. The thing I like to do most right now is actually training — to train more people, so that those who want to know more about oral Bible translation, to train them, and those who want to get better at doing what they need to do to translate better. I source the experts out and get them together and then run more workshops.

Jim Killam

You said it’s new, but you do have some history with it, right? So can you talk about what experience you bring to this?

Evelyn Gan

Well, let me let me address the ‘new’. Sure. It’s not. It’s new, but it’s not new. Because traditionally, when most people in the developing Third World or Developing World would aren’t educated, aren’t able to read the translators or the missionaries that come over, they will basically go over a passage with their translators. They would talk about it. They would, you know, so that their translators would know more about the passage. And then the translators would give them an oral retell in the language that they’re translating to. So basically, I don’t think it’s really new. The new part, I guess, is for the end product to remain oral. Traditionally it would be oral and then it would be written down. So it’s not new-new, but it’s new now because the end product is oral. And we are learning more about how to do it better.

So I have been involved in Bible translation, I guess my first assignment was in 2005, but I was in a written translation project. I was in three written translation projects and that’s how I started with oral translation. I had heard about OBT and I thought it was such a good idea. So when I had an opportunity to be involved in, to encourage a team of people who wanted to do translation, I encouraged them to why not try an oral translation? Because they speak a tonal language, and it’s a language that is a creole, meaning that it is a language that is based on another language, but it has grown. The language has evolved into a new language, and even though it sounds a lot like the old language, its mother language, it’s different enough that people who speak it may not understand the mother language as well. So they speak a creole. It’s a tonal language. The mother language has a written script, but it’s not one that a lot of people in that area know. So I said, why don’t you go oral? And they visited another team not too far away in a neighboring country, and they thought, oh, this is this will work. The target audience are older people also. So it’s not if they might not be able to read or they don’t share the same writing system. Or sometimes your eyes are old and you don’t want to strain them, so you prefer listening. So that was the target audience and it worked out well. I mean, they’re enjoying it. And they also find that people respond to it. And the pastors are behind the project. So it gets used quite a lot. And people bug them and say, when are you coming up with the next one? And that’s always exciting because you don’t get that in written translation. With oral translation, it comes out very once it is, it’s gone through all the process. It’s been checked, they publish it, so publish it bits by bits. And with this team, a pastor had commented to them to say that, hey, you should make YouTube videos because old people like them. So that’s how they published their translation. Basically, they make a video and then they put it on YouTube every Friday, and then they also buy China-made MP3 players that have very loud speakers and they put the translations on SD cards. So that’s another way to publish.

Jim Killam

I think you had said that earlier thinking might have said oral translation was a step toward written translation, right? That that was the ultimate. And then that thinking has changed. Can you talk about that a little about how that thinking has changed?

Evelyn Gan

It’s actually what the community, what the language community wants. And they’re also finding people are finding that there are many oral communities, meaning their preference, their learning preference is towards oral. So it doesn’t mean that they cannot read or unable to learn to read, but it’s just that that’s how they process information, by listening and by talking. And I think even in Western or in educated communities, there are a lot of oral learners. I know my dad was a school teacher. But if you were to talk to him and you were telling him things, he’s a verbal processor. And actually you could say that it shows that, you know, someone is a, a more an oral person rather than a, I mean, and he can read so and he’s not the only one. There are lots of people.

I remember once this pastor, he was one of the first pastors in his community. He’s from an indigenous community in Malaysia, and he was commenting on how people make decisions. He said, you guys come in and then you tell us, let’s talk about this. And then by five o’clock we decide. He said, that’s not how we do things. You know, we talk about it. We listen to everyone and everyone has a chance to talk about it, and we’ll listen to everybody. And by the end of the day, we might not make a decision because we haven’t really grappled with the topic yet. And so the next time we’ll come together and we’ll talk and we’ll talk and talk about it and we’ll listen and listen to everybody. And then one day we’ll say, OK, we’ve decided. And that is our decision. But right now, whatever decision we make, it’s your decision, not ours.

So yeah, that that is an oral society. I mean, he reads. He has a master’s degree, but that’s his preference, you know, and he realizes his community is also like that.

Jim Killam

What do you wish more people in Bible translation movements knew about oral translation?

Evelyn Gan

Not no more, but at least. But to experience it, to experience the one main component, I Component, I guess, of oral translation. I mean, the one that everyone hears and say, oh, that’s oral translation, is what we call internalisation. Internalisation is when you know, when you learn, when you know a passage so well, it is as if you experience it yourself. And there are so many things that go into internalisation. The exegesis and the talking about. And sometimes depending on the group, you might use your hands. If you’re a more tactile person or, you know, if you’re more visual, there might be storyboards. And then you learn and you talk about that and you ask questions, and then when you have it and you really know it, then you will be able to tell it in the most natural way. So I wish everyone would experience that. And to experience the Scripture engagement or what we in, I guess, present day Bible translation will call Scripture engagement and then experience the Scripture engagement part of it. I think if they experience that, then they would understand why it is something that would benefit so many people.

I was a school teacher. I was an English teacher. And reading is hard. Reading in a second language is harder, but even reading in your own language is hard. And I think we assume that if you’ve gone through secondary school, you finish school, you can read and then you’d be able to read. Well, but I don’t think — I mean, if we are really honest, we’ll find that a lot of people find it hard to read. It’s a skill, and reading the Bible is even harder. So I feel that we should give oral translation a chance. And some people would say, oh, well, you know, we translate the Bible, you write it down, and then you make audio Bibles. But Bibles that were recorded were written translation is, it was translated — it’s written for your eyes. You know, when we read, it’s it’s just different. And you do an oral translation, it’s for your ears. And so yeah, it’s just different. I don’t think you if you listen to any audio Bible, you’ll find also that sometimes it’s actually better for your eyes to be reading it and then to be hearing it, especially if you’re doing a Bible study. So if you’re doing a Bible study with an oral passage, it’s going to be different, too. But, you’ll also be learning it differently. And you learn it in a group. But most oral societies are they do things in a group anyway. If they’re going to do Bible study, it’s going to be in a group, and therefore they’ll be listening to it, and then they’ll be talking about it and they will learn from one another. And we all know when we have conversations, one feeds another. You know, you somebody will say something and you go, oh yeah. And then it brings something else to mind. And it grows and it becomes richer. And the same thing for oral communities if they use an oral translation to do Bible study.

Jim Killam

Can the whole Bible be translated orally? I mean, you took us through a story from the gospels today, and it worked beautifully. What happens when you get to Leviticus or, you know, something like that?

Evelyn Gan

It becomes more challenging. It does become more challenging. Well, it’s in a sense kind of by the time they get to Leviticus, they’ve gone through the whole New Testament. And even in the New Testament they would be translating epistles. And that’s different also. So the team will learn and the team will grow. And there are ways of helping. It’s not going to be the same as doing a narrative, a story. It’s going to be different, but the team will have learned how to do it well, how to translate something, how to understand. And I would say that most translators for oral translation, they would probably end up dreaming the things that they are translating. And that’s why … there’s a the team that I work with in Malaysia, one of the translators, pastor Joy, she says, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night saying, ah, that’s the better way to translate it. She says, you, your mind doesn’t stop. You’re thinking about it. And that’s the thing about internalisation. When does it start? It starts when you are listening to it. But if you already know it, if, like pastor Joy, she’s a pastor, she would have already prepared her heart because she knows a lot of things and she knows that she’s going to translate this passage. It would have already started in her mind. And then while she’s working with her facilitator or her exegete, it goes on while she’s listening to the passage. And it doesn’t end, because when she leaves, she’ll still be thinking about it. She might have drafted it, but she’ll still be thinking about it.

Jim Killam

You’ve taken your training to new places, and you plan to take it to some new places. What’s been the reception so far? I know you did a workshop in Peru that opened some eyes, right?

Evelyn Gan

Yeah. Because they didn’t know what oral translation was. And they had assumptions. And the group of us that went all don’t speak Spanish, so we relied on people to translate for us, which meant that all the teaching that we did was … it was very hands-on. So they had to do things and we showed some, and then they did it. And then those who helped us translate, they basically were the teachers because they had to do all the skits. They had to do everything. …  And from there we didn’t tell them, but they the principles came from them watching and learning. And it wasn’t us who told them, Well, the principle for this is …. So they realized themselves. And because they were doing it, they saw for themselves how not difficult it was, how practical it was, how useful it was. They actually went all the way from learning the passage to … they learned the passage, and then they drafted. And then we had them check with the community. And one of the passages got checked, ran through a consultant check. So it went through all the process of Bible translation. And when they did the community check, they got good response.

In Malaysia, we actually ran two workshops in Malaysia. The second workshop we actually got, the staff were from different organizations. We had people from FCBH, Spoken Worldwide CRU or Jesusfilm.org. We had from India, Malaysia. So we had people from different organizations and we wanted to just focus on the principles of oral Bible translation. We didn’t want a methodology. We didn’t want, OK, this is how you do it, how you should do it. These are the steps, but these are the principles. And then so we did it through skits. We did it through  … we frustrated a lot of people because there were no notes. And we didn’t tell them, Well, you do it this way, this way, this way. But at the end of every session, we’ll say, OK, what did you learn from? And they would verbalize the learning. It drove some people crazy at first, but at the end they realized, oh, OK. You know, now I understand because and this is how I would verbalize it. So it turned out pretty good.

Phil Prior

We’ve said that OBT in our context is fairly new. How do people that are hearing about OBT for the first time and thinking, maybe I know language communities that would benefit from this, or I want to understand more, how do they find out more?

Evelyn Gan

Well, actually, all you have to do is Google and you’ll get a lot of information. There’s a lot of writings, a lot of articles on it. There’s so many organisations that just do oral Bible translation. You have FCBH, you have Spoken Worldwide. You have The Word for the World. And there are so many more. And so there’s a lot of information out there. And you can write me.

Jim Killam

And probably the best way to do that would be have people email info@wycliffe.net. And then that message would get on to you very quickly.

Evelyn Gan

Yep.

Phil Prior

Do you have hopes, dreams, ideas of how OBT can play a part in the Bible translation movement or continue to play a part?

Evelyn Gan

Wycliffe South Africa actually does OBTT. So the extra T is transcription. And so they do an oral translation and they transcribe it or they write it down. And this is for any community that says, hey, yeah oral is good and all. But at the end of the day we have churches and churches that want written translations. And so they’re doing both. They’re taking the oral translation, which will give you a very good natural draft. And I don’t know their process, but my interpretation of the process would be then they would take it and they would make it into a translation that is for reading. So it might sound a little different from the oral translation. So depending on the community — and there’s another great story from Wycliffe South Africa, from the African region where they are doing Psalms that Sing. So they’re translating Psalms into songs. And it’s an oral translation, of course. And that has many people. I mean, music is for many communities, music is just … it brings life. So that’s another way of bringing the Psalms to life and make it a little bit more relevant, because some people feel that, oh, that’s pretty old or that’s very Hebrew. But when you put it into music.

Phil Prior

A few days ago, you directed us towards a website which already has audio Scripture available. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Evelyn Gan

Spoken English Bible has published their translation on a website called Akuo. It’s not only a website, there’s also a app. So anyone who does Bible translation can actually publish on that app or that website. Yeah. And if you’re curious about how an oral translation sounds like if you’re an English speaker, then go to Akuo. I think they also have another one or two languages on there. Akuo is an app that was developed by SIL.

Phil Prior

Yeah, it was interesting. I went to try it out yesterday and thought, I’ll have a look at the psalm that we were going to use that day as a reflective passage. And so I downloaded the Psalm and it was a song, and I was like, oh, I wasn’t expecting that because I don’t typically read Psalms as songs. And then I thought about it. And of course, the Psalms were written as songs, so why wouldn’t it be a song? So I’m curious to delve more into that and to see and hear more about the content that’s in there.

Evelyn Gan

Well, at Global Gathering, do you remember the group that came and has had a concert? That’s a group that came came together to do Psalms That Sing. Do you know the story behind that?

Phil Prior

No. Go on.

Evelyn Gan

It’s a language that is not anybody’s language in the sense. People that came together, they are from different cultural ethnic backgrounds, and they all got together and came up with this language. So they always felt that their language was second class because it wasn’t an indigenous language, kind of. It wasn’t. And then their identity is a mixed identity. And so they’ve always felt second class, I think. But when they got this group together, and most of them are actually professional musicians, and got them to craft songs from Psalms, and I think they actually translated from the Hebrew, also. There was a lot of scholarship that went into it, the whole thing. After several Psalms, they would hold concerts. And it just gave pride and identity to the people.

Phil Prior

Is there anything else that we should have asked you about that you would like the global Bible translation community to know what would encourage them?

Evelyn Gan

I would encourage them. We would encourage them to find out that people look forward. A lot of communities that have OBT translations, they look forward to when it comes out, they look forward to. Does this team in Indonesia, the Haka team, every after several months, they would have this much of translations done. They would take SD cards, they would download and they would go to the people that they have given the MP3 players to. And they would exchange, you know? And people always look forward. And there was a story where they were doing that, and then they had heard someone running after them and saying, oh, what to do? My MP3 player is broken. How am I going to listen to it? And so they got him a new one, you know, and so you hear things like that. So I would say, yeah, when you know how excited people are. And people wait for it to come out. And I think that’s the nice thing about oral Bible translation, because you don’t have to wait a long time to get something new.

Phil Prior

Evelyn, thank you so much. I love your heart for telling stories, even in the way you respond to these questions.

Evelyn Gan

Well, thank you. Thank you for wanting to know more.

Phil Prior

Our thanks again to Evelyn Gann for the amazing work she and her teammates are doing. And for the time she took to sit down with us in Kenya and talk about oral Bible translation and the impact that it is having.

Jim Killam

Yeah. And again, we want to point you to the news package we’ve just published on Wycliffe.net about OBT, oral Bible translation. One of the stories is about the OBT training Evelyn and her team did this year in Peru. It’s the kind of cross-cultural collaboration that the Alliance gets to help enable. And that’s one of the fun things about the Alliance. And then there’s another story from Nigeria, from our friend Joshua, about how OBT and written translation are progressing together in some places.

Phil Prior

Yeah. And these stories point to a really common theme in global Bible translation movements, that it doesn’t always work the same way in all communities. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about the body of Christ. And one of the wonderful things about the Alliance is that within this community, there’s room for experimentation and trial and discovering different methods and what works in different contexts.

Jim Killam

So thanks for listening to this episode of the Journey podcast, and, uh, we’ll see you next time.