[What follows is a revised and much expanded version of words I shared (primarily in Mandarin) at the Tayal Bible Publication Thanksgiving Service, held at Yu-shan Theological Seminary, Hualien Taiwan, on February 9, 2023.]

Yu-shan Theological Seminary on the shores of Liyu Lake, venue for the Tayal Bible Publication Service (2023-02-09)

Lokah su ga. (Tayal greeting.) In the Bible, Jesus quotes the Old Testament and says (Matt 4:4, cf. Deut 8:3):

<<Kmayal qu sesyo mha, <Iyat nniqun nanak qu stman mqyanux na squliq,

    qnahaw su siy ki stama squ qutux qutux ke na Utux Kayal.> >> (Tayal2023)

「聖經說：『人的生存不僅是靠食物，

而是靠上帝所說的每一句話。』」(TCV2019)

“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (NIV2011)

M’hway balay Utux Kayal! (Thanks be to God!) In 2003, the Tayal New Testament plus Short Old Testament was published. Now, 20 years later, we have all of God’s written Word in the complete Tayal Bible (OT + NT).

Tayal Pastor’s Choir

Tayal Presbytery Moderator preaches

I remember a few years ago chatting with our beloved senior team member, Rev Sangas Tahus. (Sadly, he died a couple of months ago at the age of 91, before he could see the newly published Tayal Bible.) Sangas told me about one day in the early 1950s. As he spoke, he kept thanking God for Rev James Dickson who asked him then, “Do you want to translate the Bible into your Tayal language?” Sangas replied, “Yes, of course! If we can get more help.” Rev Dickson and Rev Sangas organized the very first Tayal Bible translation team, which consisted of gifted young pastors, plus a newly appointed (in 1953) Canadian Presbyterian missionary, Rev Clare McGill. They were the pioneers, back in the day when draft translations were done by hand, then after team review, finalized and set to print using a typewriter.

Senior Tayal translator and pioneer Rev Sangas (2016-10-19)

Paul with Tayal Rev Sangas (2018-12-04)

Today at this special worship service, in my roles as another Canadian Presbyterian missionary and as a Bible Society in Taiwan Translation Advisor (TA), I thank God for the partnership between the PCT, the PCC and the BST in producing the Tayal Bible. We thank God for his gracious mercy and faithfulness over all the years Clare and his wife Grace served the Tayal people in Taiwan, 1953-1984. Along with Sangas and others, they made tremendous contributions: from putting the spoken indigenous Tayal language with its complicated glottal stops into writing for the very first time, to the start of Tayal literacy and Bible translation work in the 1950s, to the publication of the first Tayal New Testament (in phonetic script) in 1974, to its publication in Roman script in the 1980s. (Clare and Grace were also instrumental in writing and translating Tayal hymns.)

Tayal Bible New Testament Portions (1960s)

Tayal Bible Mark 1 in Tayal Phonetics and Han scripts (1974)

Mary Beth McLean with Grace McGill in Taichung (2012-04-24)

Another personal recollection. When my wife Mary Beth, wee son Andrew and I landed in Taiwan for the very first time on January 15, 1983, almost 40 years ago to the day of this special Tayal Bible celebration service, it was Clare McGill who met us at the airport and welcomed us to Taiwan. He and Grace were very kind in helping us get adjusted to life in Taiwan, especially when we moved into a rural Hakka village. They were our nearest missionary neighbours, about two hours away by an old bus. Forty years ago, I had no idea that after I finished helping translate the Hakka Bible (published in 2012), God would open a new unexpected door for me to help the indigenous Tayal Bible translation team complete the work which Clare and Grace began in the 1950s. It’s a humbling thought, which also puts a smile on my face. To paraphrase, as the heavens are higher than the mountains of Taiwan, God’s ways are so much higher than our ways, and his thoughts more than our thoughts (cf. Isa 55:9).

Paul with lead Tayal Bible Translator Rev Watan Yawi (2016-08-05)

Today at this joyful celebration service, I remember another event nearly 40 years ago in the 1980s, when I was a classmate for a short time with my beloved coworker and the lead translator for the new Tayal Bible, Rev Watan Yawi. Our teacher, Rev Graham Ogden (BST-TA then), taught us some basic lessons about Bible translation: Watan for his work on the Tayal Bible, and me for my help on the Hakka Bible. In the 1980s, most of the BST’s indigenous teams had graduated from hand-written draft translations and typewriters. Watan and I used the newest IBM personal computers with all of 5 megabytes (!) of hard-drive memory based in DOS, with word-processing programs called PE2 and E-tien. Through the 1980s and 1990s, we gradually changed from storing our translations on 5¼” floppy discs to 3.5″ hard discs. I can still remember doing a “single word search” (e.g. find all the verses in the Bible with the word ‘sheep’) using DOS programs, which could run for 30 minutes! Then along came Windows which has developed over many computer generations. Alongside these changes, the United Bible Societies (UBS) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) created and developed a powerful Bible translation software program called Paratext. It can do a “single word search” in any language in seconds! Watan and I have used better and better versions of Paratext, from version 5 through the most recent version 9.

I remember seven years ago in July 2016, when the BST appointed me to be the TA to help the Tayal team complete their whole Bible. I met the team at the PCT’s Hsinchu Bible College to train them how to use Paratext with all its powerful saving, sharing and checking tools. These tools helped us make revisions in the 2003 Tayal NT plus Short OT, then enabled us to complete a faithful and accurate translation of the rest of the OT for this 2023 first complete Tayal Bible.

What kind of checking tools did Watan learn to master in Paratext?

1. Basic punctuation checks: Are there any missing capital letters in the Tayal translation? Any missing quotations marks? Are footnotes all formatted the same way? And other very basic things.

2. Wordlists: There are over 11,000 different words in the Tayal Bible. Every word had to be checked to see if it was spelled correctly. Other spell-checking tools helped us fix typos in the 2003 Bible and maintain standard spelling for this new 2023 Bible.

3. Biblical Terms checks: The whole Bible can be divided into 8 major semantic domains: e.g. animals, plants, rituals, beings, etc… In the proper names domain, we had to double check that the over 4700 (!) names for people or places in the Bible are translated where they should be (no accidental omissions) and are all spelled consistently – not two, three or four different spellings for the same person’s name, which can arise from different draft translations that were done by different people years apart from each other. We also tried to spell names of people and places closer to their Hebrew or Greek pronunciation, instead of some of the spellings inherited from the Japanese colonial era (before 1945).

4. Parallel Passages checks: As a general rule, when words or phrases in parallel passages are the same in the Hebrew or Greek original languages, we should translate their meanings the same in Tayal. And where words or phrases in parallel passages differ, we should translate their meanings differently. Paratext lists over 5000 sets of verses in the Bible that are more or less parallel. For example, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5; Jesus words in the Four Gospels; and NT verses which quote from the OT (even more complicated to check since the NT often quotes from the Greek Septuagint, not the Hebrew Masoretic text). Watan and I had to check all of these. Another example: the team made a small revision in Isaiah 61:2, so we had to make a similar revision in the parallel passage in Luke 4:19.

Since no one is currently able to translate directly from the Hebrew OT or the Greek NT into Tayal, we did what almost every translation team does, we used a “Model Text” to help us understand the meaning of verses in Hebrew or Greek. In our context in Taiwan, most indigenous Bible translation teams use Today’s Chinese Version (TCV) as their “Model Text”. To complicate things a little more, TCV has been revised and updated while we have been translating in Tayal. The first complete TCV Bible was published in 1979. The Revised TCV of 1995 was used for the 2003 Tayal NT + Short OT. Today, the new Tayal Bible has used the newest 2019 revision of TCV. I recall one example, in Esther 2:6, where TCV2019 has a revised footnote. We fixed this in Tayal too, so that Esther was not a beautiful woman over 100 years old! For difficult verses, we also consulted other translated versions: the newest revised Chinese Union version (CU2010T), the Japanese New Interconfessional Version (JNIV) which Sangas and some of our other older Tayal reviewers liked, plus English versions like GNT, NIV or NRSV. For example, we placed the Hebrew Psalm titles, e.g. in Psalm 23 “A psalm of David” <Qwas na Tabite> above verse 1, unlike TCV which places them in footnotes.

It was an honour and joy for me to work together with a great Tayal team of translators. Each person offered their God-given gifts towards the same goal. Tamut, Syat, Hetay, Sangas Tahus, Watan Tanga, Atung Yupas, and especially our brilliant lead translator Watan Yawi. Since 2016, we have eaten together, prayed together, shared the joy of translating God’s Word together, and grown a little older together. We faced some health issues together: one coworker’s leukemia, another’s near fatal heart attack. We grieved together when Watan’s wife died (Jan 20, 2022). We bear witness to the important biblical truth, that when we are weak, God reveals his grace and strength (cf. 2 Cor 12:9).

From July 2016 until the Covid pandemic shut international travel down in March 2020, I was blessed to meet in-person with the Tayal team 13 times, three times a year. We received much love and generous hospitality when we met in Tayal churches from Puli in the southern central mountains to mountain villages in Miaoli, Hsinchu, and Taoyuan in the north, to Nan-shan and Lotung in the north-east. It was always a great joy to visit Tayal churches and feel their love for the team and their prayer support. During the Covid years, I experienced a new kind of joy by meeting online with my dear older Tayal brother, Watan Yawi, usually once a week.

It has taken many years and many people, almost 70 years from the 1950s to today, to produce this first complete Tayal Bible. The BST started typesetting the final translation in November 2021. Watan and I helped proofread it all. When we finished in July 2022, the text was sent to the Korean Bible Society to print and bind at their first-class Bible printing press.

New Tayal Bible – Psalms (2023-02-09)

Today (Feb 9, 2023) we praise God and celebrate the publication of the new Tayal Bible. But pastors and elders, now your work begins! To USE the new Tayal Bible daily. To TEACH the new Tayal Bible in your churches and communities.

God makes us a promise in Isaiah 55:11 which says:

Sinnonan ke maku ga miyan qaniy balay! Ini nbah mngbang ke maku,

  qzinah p’balay tmasuq squ sinngusan maku, mtzyuwaw squ qsahuy maku. (Tayal2023)

我應許的話就是這樣。我的話從不落空，

卻要成就我的計畫，要執行我的旨意。(TCV2019)

“…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (NIV2011)

May God’s will be done by means of the written Word in Tayal too! May more and more people come to faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour, serve their Lord faithfully, and see God’s kingdom come in Tayal villages and throughout Taiwan. All to the glory, honour and praise of our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

New Tayal Bible goes on sale at the Publication Celebration (2023-02-09)