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In this episode of the podcast, we're going to be hearing from Susanna Baldwin. Susanna is a

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Bible translator in Darwin, and she's going to speak to us about the challenges of Bible translation.

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But she also helps us to think through questions we can ask when we are considering which English

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version we might choose to read. I hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome to another episode of the

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CCL podcast, Moore College’s Centre for Christian Living Podcast. And today, I'm joined by my friend

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Susanna Baldwin. Susanna is a graduate of Moore College and has been working in Bible translation

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in the Northern Territory. Welcome to the podcast. Susanna, I wonder if you could start by telling us

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a little bit about yourself, how you became a Christian and how you came to be in Christian

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ministry. Thank you for having me. It's nice to join you. So I grew up in England, in suburban

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North London. I grew up in a Christian family and so I've been going to church all my life and

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one of those people who probably can't really pinpoint a time when they started believing in

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God or gospel, but so very thankful to have had that strong Christian upbringing. The church I

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went to with my family in London was a very old school Anglican church. It drew people from far

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and wide who were united in their love for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible.

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So I grew up with a lot of Christian words and jargon and knowledge in my head, but it probably

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took me until my early 20s to start really solidifying that into practical living as a

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Christian, I think. That was very much helped by actually moving to a different church and

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hearing the Bible taught in a bit of a different way and in different language and meeting more

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Christian friends of my own age for the first time. And so around my early to mid-20s, I guess

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I'd say I had a bit of a Christian growth spurt at that point and became a lot more invested in my

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faith on a day-to-day basis and more involved at church and interested in ministry activities,

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but I didn't really have any thoughts about going into vocational ministry for a long time.

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There was one time around, maybe a couple of years after I'd moved to that church where I went to a

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talk given by someone from Wycliffe Bible Translators who I'd never heard of at the time. In fact,

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I think up until that point, it never even occurred to me to think about how the Bible got into other

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languages or who did that work or why it was necessary, anything like that. But this man came

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and gave a talk about the work of Wycliffe in various different countries and it really blew my

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mind, I think. I would say it was just such a novel thing for me to think about all these people

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around the world who actually didn't have the Bible at all and then people who were doing the work

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of researching those languages and living alongside people from different language groups and helping

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them translate the Bible into their languages. And at the end of that talk, I turned to the

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friend sitting next to me and said, oh, I think I could see myself doing that. And so it was like

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this little light bulb moment. And then after that, I literally went home and did not think about

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it again for about five years. So clearly had a bit of a short attention span when I was that age.

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But then in 2009, I moved out to Sydney for work, I was originally just planning to come

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for a couple of years and work out there. And then that sort of evolved into second job and

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stayed on for a bit longer. And then a few years after my move to Sydney, there was this a shortish

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period of time in around the middle of 2011 where a number of different conversations and

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encounters and little nudges happened that really brought this idea of vocational ministry back

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onto my radar. And people started to encourage or challenge me to think about whether maybe I

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should pursue some sort of ministry path. Initially, I was quite resistant to the idea. I was still

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very sure that ministry was something that other people did and that my calling was in the secular

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workforce. And I really held strongly to that. But the more I thought about it, the more I just

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felt myself being kind of gently nudged in the other direction. So in the end, in really quite a

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short space of time, I made the decision to quit my job and apply to more college and pursue

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theological training. And I started to think through, well, if I am going to go down the

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vocational ministry path, what would that look like? What would I be best suited to quickly

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ruled out a lot of things that I didn't think I would be any good at or want to do. But this memory

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of that long ago, Wycliffe talk came back to me and thought, oh, yeah, I do like words and languages

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and thinking about communication, those kind of things. And realized that maybe Bible translation

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was a good fit for my skills and interests. Yeah, so I started to look up some contacts

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that were involved, had been involved in Bible translation, applied them with questions. And

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yeah, the conviction kind of grew on me that this is probably something I could do and that I'd enjoy

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and that would be useful for God's kingdom. So that's, yeah, the direction I took.

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And you're currently in the Northern Territory, but that's not where you were originally planning

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to work in Bible translation. Can you tell us a little bit about your circuitous route to the

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Northern Territory? Yes, it was a bit of a roundabout trip. So when I initially decided that

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I wanted to work in Bible translation, my first thought was that I wanted to serve in Africa.

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I didn't really have a good reason for that. But someone once said to me, or if you get a feeling

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about a country, it's probably good just to run with it. There's hundreds of places around the

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world you can go. So if you think of one place, just stick with it because I'm sure God can use

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you there. So I thought that's good enough for me. So I initially applied to work in Tanzania.

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I'd heard of a number of missionaries working there and felt like I'd got to know a little bit

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about Tanzania. And there was some Bible translation projects going on there. So I was assigned to

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a team in Tanzania. And then I wasn't able to get a visa to go to Tanzania because the government

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was clamping down on visas being given to foreign workers. So that was all a big process. We tried

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to appeal, but nothing really happened there. So in the end, decided to pull the plug on Tanzania.

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And then I refocused my thoughts on Ethiopia, which was somewhere else I thought about initially

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when I was looking at Africa. So got lined up to go and join a translation team in Ethiopia.

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And I flew out to Addis Ababa on the 11th of March, 2020, which turned out to be

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slightly bad timing because this little virus situation that had been brewing in Asia suddenly

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rapidly spread across the whole world. And so in my first week in Ethiopia, the first COVID cases

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arrived there. Lots of public services started shutting down, language school that I was going

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to go to close down. The offices were I was going to be working, also shut down. And at that point,

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Whitcliffe advised all their workers who were overseas to think about returning to Australia or

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other passport countries. And so, yeah, so after 10 days in Ethiopia, I was on my way again,

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shortest start to a long term misdrap ever. So I headed back to the UK for the rest of that year,

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stayed with my mom and waited to see what would happen in Ethiopia. Things didn't really get

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much better there. The COVID crisis was getting worse. And then there was a bit of a civil war

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brewing as well, which didn't make it ideal for newbie to rock up and try and start life there.

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So that being the case, I started talking to Whitcliffe about whether there might be an option

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for me to come and work in Australia for a bit. Because I knew there was some language and

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translation work going on over here. I'd heard about another family who were planning to go to

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Mexico on their Whitcliffe assignment and got pulled back because of COVID. And they'd gone to the

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Northern Territory to do some interim work up there. So I made contact with the team working

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in Darwin and my now colleague and friend, Kathy, talked to me about this project, the “Plain English

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Version” that she was working on and said, this is something we could definitely use your help with,

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even if just for six months or a year. So I ended up coming back to Australia by some miracle of

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God that I got on a flight at a time when hardly any flights were going. There were about 10 people

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on this whole plane that I flew to Australia on. But I guess got one of me to come back. So that was

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very encouraging. So that was early 2021. So I've been in Darwin for about three years now.

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Yeah, I think you can see my six months expanded out a bit. And I think I'm probably

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committing to the medium to long-term here now.

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Yeah, you're working on the plain English version. Why are you working on that rather than one of the

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Indigenous languages? Yes, I mean, this is a bit of a wrestle for us in many ways, because

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ideally, we don't want indigenous people to be reading the Bible in a second language. We want

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them to be reading it in the language that speaks to their hearts. And for most of our target audience,

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that language is not English. It really boils down to the fact that there are just not the people

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and resources available to start or sustain translation projects in all of the languages that

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need them. And so the plain English version is by our own admission, a little bit of a shortcut to

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try and create a translation of the Bible that is at least understandable and usable to a wide

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range of Indigenous language speakers. But also importantly, it provides a resource that they

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can use for their own translation work. Because as I say, there are a lot of indigenous Christians

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who are keen to work on translation and often are doing their own translation work in their

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communities, but they need an existing translation to work from, obviously, to be able to do that.

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And in many cases, the best available Bible to them will be an English Bible, but many of the

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existing translations are just too complex languages, too sophisticated for them to be able to

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understand clearly and to be able to translate it into their languages. And so we hope the plain

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English version will really serve that purpose as well of providing a translation resource

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that will enable more translation work to happen in indigenous languages.

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Tell us a little bit about this approach. What's the thinking behind the plain English version?

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Sure. So the project began about 15 years ago. It was started by a man called Dave Glasgow and

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here in his wife were working in a remote Aboriginal community called Maningrida.

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They were there to help with Bible translation in wonderful languages of Maningrida called Burarra.

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They completed a New Testament in Burarra during their time there. But as they were doing that,

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they found that other people in the community, even though they understood the Burarra language,

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didn't actually want to use the Burarra Bible because it wasn't their family's language. They

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didn't own that language. There can be a sense of if you speak someone else's language that's

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actually like stealing their language. And so there's interesting concepts around language,

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ownership and identity and things. But the outcome of that was that, yes, a lot of the

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non-Burarra people in Maningrida weren't actually using this translation that Dave had been working on.

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So he started to think about how could he help people who are not from the Burarra people still

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be able to access the Bible in a way that they can understand. And so he developed this idea for

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the plain English version, which is an English translation of the Bible that's really tailored

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to the kind of vocabulary and grammar and concepts and narrative devices that are relatable to people

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who speak indigenous Australian languages as their first language or first, second, third languages.

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So it's quite a unique translation. It uses very small units of meaning, as would be the case for

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any second language resource that you create. It uses a vocabulary of around 3,500 words. So these

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are all words that are familiar to people who speak indigenous languages and are the kind of words

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that they would use if they're speaking English to each other or to other people. The grammar

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structures, as I say, are ones that mirror the grammar of indigenous languages. So this includes

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things like only using simple present, past and future tenses. You probably know English has a lot

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of convoluted ways to talk about things happening in the past or in the future or maybe happening

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or might have happened. And in the plain English version, we try and pair that down to very simple

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grammatical structures. One of the big things about indigenous languages is they mostly don't

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have any abstract nouns, lots of abstract nouns in the Bible, things like grace, faith, salvation,

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forgiveness. And we talk about them as though they're a thing. But really what we're describing is

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an action or a state or some sort of intangible chain of events. And so in the plain English

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version, we have to take those noun-like concepts and break them down into actions,

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which is an interesting challenge because I think we all very easily throw these kind of words

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around in our Christian vocabulary. But when you actually have to break it down and explain,

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what is actually happening when someone forgives someone, how do you explain that as an action?

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That's one of the main features of the PEV. The PEV also tries to put information into a more

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logical or chronological order. So sometimes you're fine in the Bible in stories, you hear a story

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and then the end of the story, you hear this bit of information that really belonged back at the

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beginning. So we try and put that back into a more chronological order. And similarly with some of

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the writings in the New Testament, Paul is quite renowned for convoluted sentences and can be a

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little bit hard to break down his logic sometimes. So in the PEV, we try and put everything into a

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very simple and logical order so that someone can just read it through in one go and understand

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exactly what it's saying. And another aspect of that is that we try and clarify any information

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that is implied in the text and would have been understood by the original readers, but would

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not necessarily be understood by our audience. So that might include things like filling in little

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gaps in a story where it's sort of implied that something has happened in between two sentences,

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but it's not actually said out loud or explaining out some of the more technical words that relate

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to maybe Jewish customs or history. So things like sacrifice or temple or Pharisees.

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We would need to explain in the text what those terms mean. So the translation is a lot longer

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and wordier than most other English translations, but probably simpler to understand for it.

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Would you be able to give us a sample translation or something that we could hear just to get a

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feel for it? Yeah, sure. How about I'll read you the first few verses of Genesis and then

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sounds good. Genesis 1, 1 to 5. First of all, a long time ago, God made everything. He made the

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sky and He made the earth. He made all the things that are everywhere. The earth didn't have any shape.

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He didn't have anything. It was covered with deep water. Everything was dark. It was dark all over

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the water, but God's Spirit moved around on the top of the water. God said, I want light.

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Straight away, light was shining everywhere. God looked at it and He saw that it was good.

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So God split up the light and the dark. He called the light daytime and He called the dark

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nighttime. After that all happened, there was nighttime and there was morning time. That was day number one.

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Our culture is obsessed with identity. We're often told, you do you and encouraged to live

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according to our true and authentic selves, expressing publicly how we feel about ourselves

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internally. However, the very idea of personal identity is inherently slippery. It encompasses

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things like ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, belief, educational background, profession

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and personality, but it's not fixed. Our identity can change through time and circumstance and even

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self-invention. So how as Christians should we regard identity? God created us as unique individuals.

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How does our creatureliness affect who we are? Furthermore, as sinners who have been redeemed

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and sanctified by the Lord Jesus and adopted into the family of God, how does Christ's work

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change the way that we view ourselves? How does the encouragement to find your identity in Christ

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actually play out in the complexities of competing sources of identity? Join us for our next and

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final event in our series on culture creep on Wednesday, 23rd of October. When Rory Shiner,

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senior pastor of Providence City Church in Perth, will show us how losing ourselves for the sake of

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the kingdom will help us find ourselves once and for all. Register and find out more on our website

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ccl.moore.edu.au. Now, let's get back to our program. You've touched on some of the challenges,

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particularly maybe in the New Testament and some of those epistles. What are the other things that

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you find difficult or stretching as you've worked on the translation? One of the big things is,

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as I was saying, breaking down these theological or Christian jargon words almost that are quite

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embedded in our thinking, but that we don't often really try and get to the bottom of what do they

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actually mean, what is actually happening when God shows grace or when Jesus forgives us or when

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God saves us. So there's a lot of work to be done in digging into those concepts and making sure we

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explain them clearly, but also within the limits of the vocabulary that we've got to work with. So

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that's one of the challenges. Yeah, and I think at a sort of meta level over that, there's always

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this sense of responsibility of we're creating something that will one day be printed and bound

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on hand of the people as the word of God. And so there's a deep sense of responsibility to do that

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well. Yeah, it's, I guess, really just a matter of praying over every sentence and every stage of

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the process and praying that God preserves his truth and his message through what we're doing.

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And then more broadly, again, I think there's always the challenge or the sense weighing over us

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of the scope of the task of Bible translation. And I think the longer I spend in this field and the

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more I see, the more I feel, try not to be overwhelmed or despondent, but there is so much work to do.

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And that's even just talking within Australia on languages that don't yet have the Bible and where

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people would really love to have the Bible in their languages. There's a very strong Christian

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heritage and presence in many Aboriginal communities. People would love to have more

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help and support to translate the Bible. It's probably the one thing that they're really

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asking for from Western missionaries is Bible translation support. There are lots of Aboriginal

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church leaders and ministries happening, which they are very competent to run themselves. But

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when it comes to Bible translation, there are skills and resources that generally just aren't

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available to most remote indigenous Australians and communities. So that's where I think we can

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really step in and support our brothers and sisters in those contexts. But yes, as I say,

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there's a real dearth of people available and willing to do that work. So yeah, that's a challenge

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to sort of watch that and feel like whatever we're doing with this tiny drop in the ocean of all

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the work that needs to be done. How can listeners to this podcast support and help people like

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yourself involved in Bible translation? Yeah, I mean, obviously praying for our work and for more

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workers to do it is really the big thing. I think we always need our own resources and finances,

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but that's almost the easy part of the process. I think God provides what's needed for the workers

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to do what we're doing, but we really need more people to be willing to step up and be part of

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this ministry. So yeah, I think always be on the lookout for people that you think might be suited

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to working in Bible translation. And in that, maybe just be wary of stereotyping the kind of

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people that you think would make good Bible translators. There's lots of stereotypes out there,

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which, you know, to some extent can be grounded in reality, but also not always completely helpful.

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You don't have to be an absolute languages genius to be a translator. I definitely wouldn't put

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myself in that category. Really what we want are people who love the Bible and are interested in

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communicating it well, who are interested in how other cultures and people think and see the world,

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who are people who are relational, willing to invest time in other communities and get alongside

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translators in their contexts and support them. So as I say, tap people on the shoulder if you

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think that's something that they should consider and maybe even tap yourself on the shoulder if

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you feel like that's a ministry that you could serve in. And yeah, I think just keep an open mind

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as I say about what being a Bible translator looks like and get to know some real life translators

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and find out about their work. We love having people come to visit us in Darwin. It's an easy

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trip up from most places in Australia. So if you ever feel like you want to come for a little

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exposure trip and come and see what we're up to and meet some people, then we're always very happy

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to arrange that. And just keep the conversation alive. I think about Bible translation among

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churches and Bible study groups and people, you know, I think it's not always the first

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mission or ministry area that people think of when you're praying or encouraging people into

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mission work. So yeah, just keeping it on everyone's radars, I think. And yeah, continue to pray.

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Yeah, it'll be great. Particularly as native English speakers, we are so blessed with

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so many English versions. And there's something appropriate about that because they are read by

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not just people who are native speakers, but it is access to the Word of God through the language

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that is so widely spoken around the world. Just as a final question and sort of stepping back a

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little bit, you work in Bible translation, how does that help you think about the Bible that you

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might read as a Christian? Interestingly, right at the beginning, you talked about your church

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that you grew up in where you read the King James version. I'm guessing that probably isn't the

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version that you read in your quiet time every morning, although it's not. I do love and appreciate

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the King James version. I think a lot more now than I did at the start. I understand a lot of

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what's going on behind the big fancy words, but you're right, it's not a great everyday reading

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Bible. Yeah. So just thoughts about the English versions that we have and maybe just some helpful

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things that listeners can think about maybe as they think about what version should I use or

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what version should we use in our church, those sort of questions. Yeah, I mean, as translators,

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we often think in four categories to think about what makes a good Bible translation. So we say

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we want it to be accurate, which means it conveys the same meaning as the original text to the

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original audience. We want it to be clear, so it's easily understood by the people reading it. We

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want it to sound natural, so we want it to sound like a person who speaks that language would speak,

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and we want it to be accepted. We want people to like it and be willing to use it. Now really,

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the last three of those things, clear, natural, accepted are very subjective and can vary depending

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on the individual, the context, and could be a matter of personal preference to a large extent,

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especially if you're just talking about a Bible that you want to use personally.

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The accuracy criteria is probably the most important one to think about a little bit more

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objectively. And again, there's sort of a lot of room for debate about what makes an accurate

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translation. As you said, Peter, there are numerous different English translations currently in use,

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and without having done all the research, I think it would be fair to say that a lot of them

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are quite accurate in the way that they represent the original languages, but they've interpreted

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those texts in various different ways or used the literary styles to communicate the message of those

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texts. But a few things that you might want to think about if you're trying to assess how

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good a translation is, would be to look at things like, was it produced by a panel of translators

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or just by one translator working by themselves? If the latter, then that may be a bit of a red

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flag because ideally you would have lots of different people and put it in putting into the

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translation. Similarly, did the translation grow out of one denomination or tradition, or is there

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a broad representation of different Christian denominations on that translation group? Was

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the translation based off the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible, or is it a translation

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of another English translation? If the latter, again, a bit of a red flag because you want to

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make sure that your source text is the original text of the Bible and not a second translation of it.

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And then you might want to look at how long the translation took to produce,

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generally probably the longer the better. If someone whipped out a translation of the New

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Testament in two years, I'd be pretty concerned about its accuracy. And then just generally

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is it being used by other people that you trust, by churches that you trust? So I think all those

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things together will probably help you get an idea of how good the translation is. But as I say,

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when it comes to things like the style of language used or whether you think it sounds kind of

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natural or a little bit stilted, there might be contexts where that's actually helpful for you

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to be able to read a Bible in that way. So those things would all be somewhat a matter of personal

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preference. Yeah, well, that's very helpful. Susanna, thank you very much for your time with us

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today. We really appreciate this conversation and we really appreciate very important work that you're

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doing in Bible translation. And we wish you all the best and we will try and remember to pray for

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you in that. Thank you, Susanna. Thanks Peter.

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To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moor.edu.au

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where you'll find a host of resources including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events

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We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you'd like

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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

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