In this episode of the podcast, we're going to be hearing from Susanna Baldwin. Susanna is a
Bible translator in Darwin, and she's going to speak to us about the challenges of Bible translation.
But she also helps us to think through questions we can ask when we are considering which English
version we might choose to read. I hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome to another episode of the
CCL podcast, Moore College’s Centre for Christian Living Podcast. And today, I'm joined by my friend
Susanna Baldwin. Susanna is a graduate of Moore College and has been working in Bible translation
in the Northern Territory. Welcome to the podcast. Susanna, I wonder if you could start by telling us
a little bit about yourself, how you became a Christian and how you came to be in Christian
ministry. Thank you for having me. It's nice to join you. So I grew up in England, in suburban
North London. I grew up in a Christian family and so I've been going to church all my life and
one of those people who probably can't really pinpoint a time when they started believing in
God or gospel, but so very thankful to have had that strong Christian upbringing. The church I
went to with my family in London was a very old school Anglican church. It drew people from far
and wide who were united in their love for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible.
So I grew up with a lot of Christian words and jargon and knowledge in my head, but it probably
took me until my early 20s to start really solidifying that into practical living as a
Christian, I think. That was very much helped by actually moving to a different church and
hearing the Bible taught in a bit of a different way and in different language and meeting more
Christian friends of my own age for the first time. And so around my early to mid-20s, I guess
I'd say I had a bit of a Christian growth spurt at that point and became a lot more invested in my
faith on a day-to-day basis and more involved at church and interested in ministry activities,
but I didn't really have any thoughts about going into vocational ministry for a long time.
There was one time around, maybe a couple of years after I'd moved to that church where I went to a
talk given by someone from Wycliffe Bible Translators who I'd never heard of at the time. In fact,
I think up until that point, it never even occurred to me to think about how the Bible got into other
languages or who did that work or why it was necessary, anything like that. But this man came
and gave a talk about the work of Wycliffe in various different countries and it really blew my
mind, I think. I would say it was just such a novel thing for me to think about all these people
around the world who actually didn't have the Bible at all and then people who were doing the work
of researching those languages and living alongside people from different language groups and helping
them translate the Bible into their languages. And at the end of that talk, I turned to the
friend sitting next to me and said, oh, I think I could see myself doing that. And so it was like
this little light bulb moment. And then after that, I literally went home and did not think about
it again for about five years. So clearly had a bit of a short attention span when I was that age.
But then in 2009, I moved out to Sydney for work, I was originally just planning to come
for a couple of years and work out there. And then that sort of evolved into second job and
stayed on for a bit longer. And then a few years after my move to Sydney, there was this a shortish
period of time in around the middle of 2011 where a number of different conversations and
encounters and little nudges happened that really brought this idea of vocational ministry back
onto my radar. And people started to encourage or challenge me to think about whether maybe I
should pursue some sort of ministry path. Initially, I was quite resistant to the idea. I was still
very sure that ministry was something that other people did and that my calling was in the secular
workforce. And I really held strongly to that. But the more I thought about it, the more I just
felt myself being kind of gently nudged in the other direction. So in the end, in really quite a
short space of time, I made the decision to quit my job and apply to more college and pursue
theological training. And I started to think through, well, if I am going to go down the
vocational ministry path, what would that look like? What would I be best suited to quickly
ruled out a lot of things that I didn't think I would be any good at or want to do. But this memory
of that long ago, Wycliffe talk came back to me and thought, oh, yeah, I do like words and languages
and thinking about communication, those kind of things. And realized that maybe Bible translation
was a good fit for my skills and interests. Yeah, so I started to look up some contacts
that were involved, had been involved in Bible translation, applied them with questions. And
yeah, the conviction kind of grew on me that this is probably something I could do and that I'd enjoy
and that would be useful for God's kingdom. So that's, yeah, the direction I took.
And you're currently in the Northern Territory, but that's not where you were originally planning
to work in Bible translation. Can you tell us a little bit about your circuitous route to the
Northern Territory? Yes, it was a bit of a roundabout trip. So when I initially decided that
I wanted to work in Bible translation, my first thought was that I wanted to serve in Africa.
I didn't really have a good reason for that. But someone once said to me, or if you get a feeling
about a country, it's probably good just to run with it. There's hundreds of places around the
world you can go. So if you think of one place, just stick with it because I'm sure God can use
you there. So I thought that's good enough for me. So I initially applied to work in Tanzania.
I'd heard of a number of missionaries working there and felt like I'd got to know a little bit
about Tanzania. And there was some Bible translation projects going on there. So I was assigned to
a team in Tanzania. And then I wasn't able to get a visa to go to Tanzania because the government
was clamping down on visas being given to foreign workers. So that was all a big process. We tried
to appeal, but nothing really happened there. So in the end, decided to pull the plug on Tanzania.
And then I refocused my thoughts on Ethiopia, which was somewhere else I thought about initially
when I was looking at Africa. So got lined up to go and join a translation team in Ethiopia.
And I flew out to Addis Ababa on the 11th of March, 2020, which turned out to be
slightly bad timing because this little virus situation that had been brewing in Asia suddenly
rapidly spread across the whole world. And so in my first week in Ethiopia, the first COVID cases
arrived there. Lots of public services started shutting down, language school that I was going
to go to close down. The offices were I was going to be working, also shut down. And at that point,
Whitcliffe advised all their workers who were overseas to think about returning to Australia or
other passport countries. And so, yeah, so after 10 days in Ethiopia, I was on my way again,
shortest start to a long term misdrap ever. So I headed back to the UK for the rest of that year,
stayed with my mom and waited to see what would happen in Ethiopia. Things didn't really get
much better there. The COVID crisis was getting worse. And then there was a bit of a civil war
brewing as well, which didn't make it ideal for newbie to rock up and try and start life there.
So that being the case, I started talking to Whitcliffe about whether there might be an option
for me to come and work in Australia for a bit. Because I knew there was some language and
translation work going on over here. I'd heard about another family who were planning to go to
Mexico on their Whitcliffe assignment and got pulled back because of COVID. And they'd gone to the
Northern Territory to do some interim work up there. So I made contact with the team working
in Darwin and my now colleague and friend, Kathy, talked to me about this project, the “Plain English
Version” that she was working on and said, this is something we could definitely use your help with,
even if just for six months or a year. So I ended up coming back to Australia by some miracle of
God that I got on a flight at a time when hardly any flights were going. There were about 10 people
on this whole plane that I flew to Australia on. But I guess got one of me to come back. So that was
very encouraging. So that was early 2021. So I've been in Darwin for about three years now.
Yeah, I think you can see my six months expanded out a bit. And I think I'm probably
committing to the medium to long-term here now.
Yeah, you're working on the plain English version. Why are you working on that rather than one of the
Indigenous languages? Yes, I mean, this is a bit of a wrestle for us in many ways, because
ideally, we don't want indigenous people to be reading the Bible in a second language. We want
them to be reading it in the language that speaks to their hearts. And for most of our target audience,
that language is not English. It really boils down to the fact that there are just not the people
and resources available to start or sustain translation projects in all of the languages that
need them. And so the plain English version is by our own admission, a little bit of a shortcut to
try and create a translation of the Bible that is at least understandable and usable to a wide
range of Indigenous language speakers. But also importantly, it provides a resource that they
can use for their own translation work. Because as I say, there are a lot of indigenous Christians
who are keen to work on translation and often are doing their own translation work in their
communities, but they need an existing translation to work from, obviously, to be able to do that.
And in many cases, the best available Bible to them will be an English Bible, but many of the
existing translations are just too complex languages, too sophisticated for them to be able to
understand clearly and to be able to translate it into their languages. And so we hope the plain
English version will really serve that purpose as well of providing a translation resource
that will enable more translation work to happen in indigenous languages.
Tell us a little bit about this approach. What's the thinking behind the plain English version?
Sure. So the project began about 15 years ago. It was started by a man called Dave Glasgow and
here in his wife were working in a remote Aboriginal community called Maningrida.
They were there to help with Bible translation in wonderful languages of Maningrida called Burarra.
They completed a New Testament in Burarra during their time there. But as they were doing that,
they found that other people in the community, even though they understood the Burarra language,
didn't actually want to use the Burarra Bible because it wasn't their family's language. They
didn't own that language. There can be a sense of if you speak someone else's language that's
actually like stealing their language. And so there's interesting concepts around language,
ownership and identity and things. But the outcome of that was that, yes, a lot of the
non-Burarra people in Maningrida weren't actually using this translation that Dave had been working on.
So he started to think about how could he help people who are not from the Burarra people still
be able to access the Bible in a way that they can understand. And so he developed this idea for
the plain English version, which is an English translation of the Bible that's really tailored
to the kind of vocabulary and grammar and concepts and narrative devices that are relatable to people
who speak indigenous Australian languages as their first language or first, second, third languages.
So it's quite a unique translation. It uses very small units of meaning, as would be the case for
any second language resource that you create. It uses a vocabulary of around 3,500 words. So these
are all words that are familiar to people who speak indigenous languages and are the kind of words
that they would use if they're speaking English to each other or to other people. The grammar
structures, as I say, are ones that mirror the grammar of indigenous languages. So this includes
things like only using simple present, past and future tenses. You probably know English has a lot
of convoluted ways to talk about things happening in the past or in the future or maybe happening
or might have happened. And in the plain English version, we try and pair that down to very simple
grammatical structures. One of the big things about indigenous languages is they mostly don't
have any abstract nouns, lots of abstract nouns in the Bible, things like grace, faith, salvation,
forgiveness. And we talk about them as though they're a thing. But really what we're describing is
an action or a state or some sort of intangible chain of events. And so in the plain English
version, we have to take those noun-like concepts and break them down into actions,
which is an interesting challenge because I think we all very easily throw these kind of words
around in our Christian vocabulary. But when you actually have to break it down and explain,
what is actually happening when someone forgives someone, how do you explain that as an action?
That's one of the main features of the PEV. The PEV also tries to put information into a more
logical or chronological order. So sometimes you're fine in the Bible in stories, you hear a story
and then the end of the story, you hear this bit of information that really belonged back at the
beginning. So we try and put that back into a more chronological order. And similarly with some of
the writings in the New Testament, Paul is quite renowned for convoluted sentences and can be a
little bit hard to break down his logic sometimes. So in the PEV, we try and put everything into a
very simple and logical order so that someone can just read it through in one go and understand
exactly what it's saying. And another aspect of that is that we try and clarify any information
that is implied in the text and would have been understood by the original readers, but would
not necessarily be understood by our audience. So that might include things like filling in little
gaps in a story where it's sort of implied that something has happened in between two sentences,
but it's not actually said out loud or explaining out some of the more technical words that relate
to maybe Jewish customs or history. So things like sacrifice or temple or Pharisees.
We would need to explain in the text what those terms mean. So the translation is a lot longer
and wordier than most other English translations, but probably simpler to understand for it.
Would you be able to give us a sample translation or something that we could hear just to get a
feel for it? Yeah, sure. How about I'll read you the first few verses of Genesis and then
sounds good. Genesis 1, 1 to 5. First of all, a long time ago, God made everything. He made the
sky and He made the earth. He made all the things that are everywhere. The earth didn't have any shape.
He didn't have anything. It was covered with deep water. Everything was dark. It was dark all over
the water, but God's Spirit moved around on the top of the water. God said, I want light.
Straight away, light was shining everywhere. God looked at it and He saw that it was good.
So God split up the light and the dark. He called the light daytime and He called the dark
nighttime. After that all happened, there was nighttime and there was morning time. That was day number one.
Our culture is obsessed with identity. We're often told, you do you and encouraged to live
according to our true and authentic selves, expressing publicly how we feel about ourselves
internally. However, the very idea of personal identity is inherently slippery. It encompasses
things like ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, belief, educational background, profession
and personality, but it's not fixed. Our identity can change through time and circumstance and even
self-invention. So how as Christians should we regard identity? God created us as unique individuals.
How does our creatureliness affect who we are? Furthermore, as sinners who have been redeemed
and sanctified by the Lord Jesus and adopted into the family of God, how does Christ's work
change the way that we view ourselves? How does the encouragement to find your identity in Christ
actually play out in the complexities of competing sources of identity? Join us for our next and
final event in our series on culture creep on Wednesday, 23rd of October. When Rory Shiner,
senior pastor of Providence City Church in Perth, will show us how losing ourselves for the sake of
the kingdom will help us find ourselves once and for all. Register and find out more on our website
ccl.moore.edu.au. Now, let's get back to our program. You've touched on some of the challenges,
particularly maybe in the New Testament and some of those epistles. What are the other things that
you find difficult or stretching as you've worked on the translation? One of the big things is,
as I was saying, breaking down these theological or Christian jargon words almost that are quite
embedded in our thinking, but that we don't often really try and get to the bottom of what do they
actually mean, what is actually happening when God shows grace or when Jesus forgives us or when
God saves us. So there's a lot of work to be done in digging into those concepts and making sure we
explain them clearly, but also within the limits of the vocabulary that we've got to work with. So
that's one of the challenges. Yeah, and I think at a sort of meta level over that, there's always
this sense of responsibility of we're creating something that will one day be printed and bound
on hand of the people as the word of God. And so there's a deep sense of responsibility to do that
well. Yeah, it's, I guess, really just a matter of praying over every sentence and every stage of
the process and praying that God preserves his truth and his message through what we're doing.
And then more broadly, again, I think there's always the challenge or the sense weighing over us
of the scope of the task of Bible translation. And I think the longer I spend in this field and the
more I see, the more I feel, try not to be overwhelmed or despondent, but there is so much work to do.
And that's even just talking within Australia on languages that don't yet have the Bible and where
people would really love to have the Bible in their languages. There's a very strong Christian
heritage and presence in many Aboriginal communities. People would love to have more
help and support to translate the Bible. It's probably the one thing that they're really
asking for from Western missionaries is Bible translation support. There are lots of Aboriginal
church leaders and ministries happening, which they are very competent to run themselves. But
when it comes to Bible translation, there are skills and resources that generally just aren't
available to most remote indigenous Australians and communities. So that's where I think we can
really step in and support our brothers and sisters in those contexts. But yes, as I say,
there's a real dearth of people available and willing to do that work. So yeah, that's a challenge
to sort of watch that and feel like whatever we're doing with this tiny drop in the ocean of all
the work that needs to be done. How can listeners to this podcast support and help people like
yourself involved in Bible translation? Yeah, I mean, obviously praying for our work and for more
workers to do it is really the big thing. I think we always need our own resources and finances,
but that's almost the easy part of the process. I think God provides what's needed for the workers
to do what we're doing, but we really need more people to be willing to step up and be part of
this ministry. So yeah, I think always be on the lookout for people that you think might be suited
to working in Bible translation. And in that, maybe just be wary of stereotyping the kind of
people that you think would make good Bible translators. There's lots of stereotypes out there,
which, you know, to some extent can be grounded in reality, but also not always completely helpful.
You don't have to be an absolute languages genius to be a translator. I definitely wouldn't put
myself in that category. Really what we want are people who love the Bible and are interested in
communicating it well, who are interested in how other cultures and people think and see the world,
who are people who are relational, willing to invest time in other communities and get alongside
translators in their contexts and support them. So as I say, tap people on the shoulder if you
think that's something that they should consider and maybe even tap yourself on the shoulder if
you feel like that's a ministry that you could serve in. And yeah, I think just keep an open mind
as I say about what being a Bible translator looks like and get to know some real life translators
and find out about their work. We love having people come to visit us in Darwin. It's an easy
trip up from most places in Australia. So if you ever feel like you want to come for a little
exposure trip and come and see what we're up to and meet some people, then we're always very happy
to arrange that. And just keep the conversation alive. I think about Bible translation among
churches and Bible study groups and people, you know, I think it's not always the first
mission or ministry area that people think of when you're praying or encouraging people into
mission work. So yeah, just keeping it on everyone's radars, I think. And yeah, continue to pray.
Yeah, it'll be great. Particularly as native English speakers, we are so blessed with
so many English versions. And there's something appropriate about that because they are read by
not just people who are native speakers, but it is access to the Word of God through the language
that is so widely spoken around the world. Just as a final question and sort of stepping back a
little bit, you work in Bible translation, how does that help you think about the Bible that you
might read as a Christian? Interestingly, right at the beginning, you talked about your church
that you grew up in where you read the King James version. I'm guessing that probably isn't the
version that you read in your quiet time every morning, although it's not. I do love and appreciate
the King James version. I think a lot more now than I did at the start. I understand a lot of
what's going on behind the big fancy words, but you're right, it's not a great everyday reading
Bible. Yeah. So just thoughts about the English versions that we have and maybe just some helpful
things that listeners can think about maybe as they think about what version should I use or
what version should we use in our church, those sort of questions. Yeah, I mean, as translators,
we often think in four categories to think about what makes a good Bible translation. So we say
we want it to be accurate, which means it conveys the same meaning as the original text to the
original audience. We want it to be clear, so it's easily understood by the people reading it. We
want it to sound natural, so we want it to sound like a person who speaks that language would speak,
and we want it to be accepted. We want people to like it and be willing to use it. Now really,
the last three of those things, clear, natural, accepted are very subjective and can vary depending
on the individual, the context, and could be a matter of personal preference to a large extent,
especially if you're just talking about a Bible that you want to use personally.
The accuracy criteria is probably the most important one to think about a little bit more
objectively. And again, there's sort of a lot of room for debate about what makes an accurate
translation. As you said, Peter, there are numerous different English translations currently in use,
and without having done all the research, I think it would be fair to say that a lot of them
are quite accurate in the way that they represent the original languages, but they've interpreted
those texts in various different ways or used the literary styles to communicate the message of those
texts. But a few things that you might want to think about if you're trying to assess how
good a translation is, would be to look at things like, was it produced by a panel of translators
or just by one translator working by themselves? If the latter, then that may be a bit of a red
flag because ideally you would have lots of different people and put it in putting into the
translation. Similarly, did the translation grow out of one denomination or tradition, or is there
a broad representation of different Christian denominations on that translation group? Was
the translation based off the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible, or is it a translation
of another English translation? If the latter, again, a bit of a red flag because you want to
make sure that your source text is the original text of the Bible and not a second translation of it.
And then you might want to look at how long the translation took to produce,
generally probably the longer the better. If someone whipped out a translation of the New
Testament in two years, I'd be pretty concerned about its accuracy. And then just generally
is it being used by other people that you trust, by churches that you trust? So I think all those
things together will probably help you get an idea of how good the translation is. But as I say,
when it comes to things like the style of language used or whether you think it sounds kind of
natural or a little bit stilted, there might be contexts where that's actually helpful for you
to be able to read a Bible in that way. So those things would all be somewhat a matter of personal
preference. Yeah, well, that's very helpful. Susanna, thank you very much for your time with us
today. We really appreciate this conversation and we really appreciate very important work that you're
doing in Bible translation. And we wish you all the best and we will try and remember to pray for
you in that. Thank you, Susanna. Thanks Peter.
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to get in touch, you can email us at ccl.moor.edu.au. As always, I'd like to thank Moore College for its
support of the Centre for Christian Living and to thank my assistant Karen Beilharz for her work
in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.