Bible translation takes a long time – years and sometimes even decades! That is a long time to wait for access to the Scriptures! What can be done to help a language group to have at least some access to God’s Word while they are waiting for the entire Bible to be printed? Bibles International has a few different ways to help with this problem, but one of the main ways is through trial editions.
What Is a Trial Edition?
A trial edition is a publication of a Bible book or books, or book portions, which is published on a limited scale and distributed to key church leaders and laypeople. Although it takes extra time and money to prepare and publish a trial edition, it is worthwhile, since it enables people to read and use a portion of the translation while they are waiting for the complete publication. It also allows people to give feedback on the translation.Preparing a Trial Edition
In regular checking workshops, we take a portion of the translated text, and go through it verse by verse, making corrections as we go along. We are able to correct many things this way, but quality checks still need to be run on the text as a whole before it is ready for publication.The Sara Kaba Naa team previously produced a trial edition of Genesis, and now they are planning a trial edition containing the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. When I met with them in June, one of our tasks was to prepare the book of Exodus for this trial edition (we will prepare Deuteronomy in a later workshop). We carried out a variety of checks, such as:
- Verified the chapter and verse numbers;
- Reviewed some passages that are known to be particularly difficult to translate;
- Added subtitles throughout the book;
- Checked paragraph breaks;
- Compared parallel passages (such as Exodus 25:10 and 37:1);
- Checked consistency of the translation of key vocabulary;
- Corrected spelling, capitalization, and punctuation;
- And more!
As you can see, getting a Bible text for printing is quite a complicated process! Certainly it is also tedious at times, but it is all necessary to ensure the quality of the translation.
Three other Chadian languages besides the Sara Kaba Naa are planning to produce trial editons within the next year or so. Please pray for all four of these teams as they prepare the trial editions, and pray that God will provide the needed finances to print them.
Thank you for your faithful prayers and support.
In Christ's Service,
Anna Beth Wivell
