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I had a wonderful time in Darwin. I spent 10 days helping with the translation of the Plain English Version. It is a Bible translation using the type of English spoken by, and understood by, many Aboriginal people, particularly those who speak an Aboriginal language as their mother-tongue. The books that have already been published can be found here: https://bl.org.au/product-category/indigenous-australians/ (note that the old name was 'Simplified English'). The aim is for those who don't have the scriptures in their own language yet to have access to God's word. It is also great for churches with people from different language groups, Bible colleges and conferences, and for Christian workers who only speak English. You'll find it quite different, and maybe difficult to read. Changes from a typical English Bible include making implicit information explicit and avoiding passive sentences, abstract nouns, long sentences and most figurative language. Here is a sample:
Mark 16:6 - The angel at Jesus’ grave
NIV
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.
Plain English Version
He said to them, ‘Don’t be frightened. You are looking for the body of Jesus, the man from Nazareth that they killed on a cross. God made him alive again. He is not here. Look, see this place just here. They put his body here, but it is not here now.’
Above on the left is Dave who is working on the translation. The part of the process he was up to involved testing his drafts of 1 Corinthians in the community to see if the language was understood. We would sit down with someone and read through a chapter, asking questions along the way to gauge if everything was clear. Then we would go back and make changes accordingly. I really enjoyed the problem solving involved with coming up with clearer ways of saying things.
One of the terms that proved difficult was 'sleep with'. We found that it was often understood as simply sleeping in the same room as someone (and it's totally normal for whole households to sleep in the same room), but no one could come up with another term that was used (demonstrating the lack of figurative language). Dave had previously been told that it wasn't appropriate to use the word 'sex', because it shouldn't be read aloud in mixed company, though others had said God's word could very well say what it liked! We tested 'sex' in some passages and found it was understood, and without protest, so Dave will continue to test it and see what reactions he gets! Please pray for Dave and all those involved in the translation process.
Betty (above), was also helping us test the Plain English Version. She was introduced to me as someone who speaks English very well, using it in daily life. Even so, when she was telling me a story about the night before, I had absolutely no idea what had happened... Although we both speak 'English' regularly, we do not speak the same dialect of English! It helped me see that if Betty, and others like her, are only reading the Bible in the kind of English I speak, there's no way they will get a good grasp of what it's saying.
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