The Indigenous Mission Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (台灣基督長老教會總會原住民宣教委員會) invited me to participate in an excellent 2-day seminar in New Taipei City. I joined with nearly 40 coworkers from nine indigenous Bible translation teams supported by the PCT and the Bible Society in Taiwan (BSTWN). It was a continuing education event for Bible translators to hear special lectures, share their team experiences with other teams, and to encourage one another. Moderator of the PCT and Truku pastor, Rev Sudu Tata, opened the event with an inspiring sermon from Gen 37:5-11 and Mat 7:7-8. Like Joseph, indigenous churches and indigenous Bible translation teams have been dreaming too—dreams that all of our language groups will soon have God’s Word available in each one’s mother-tongue. Sudu encouraged us all to keep dreaming and praying, even as Jesus taught us in our prayers, to ask, seek and find.

I gave a lecture on “Bible Translation and Language” (聖經翻譯與語言). I shared from personal experience growing up with English Bibles in the King James Version, then Today’s English Version (TEV), NIV, NRSV and other versions. My coworkers grew up with Bibles in Japanese or Romanized Taiwanese, then the Mandarin Chinese Union Version (CUV), before they were introduced to Today’s Chinese Version (TCV) first published in 1979. Each team has its own unique history of translation over the past 70 years, from small portions of the Bible in phonetic scripts, to partial Bibles (NT + Short OT) in Roman script, to complete Bibles (only in Amis and Truku thus far). I reviewed the history of Bible translation and Bible revision in English, then the history of Protestant Bible translation and revision in Chinese over the past 200 years. We looked briefly at different translation theories and styles by considering the Lord’s Prayer translated into literary Chinese (from the 1800s), versus CUV, versus TCV. I did an overview of the “Functional Equivalent” theory of translation which all of our teams use. This theory promotes translating in a “meaning-for-meaning” way, rather than simply “word-for-word”. The BSTWN gave everyone a fine little book that discusses the 1995 revision of TCV and its many benefits <<書中之書的新貌：《現代中文譯本聖經》— 修訂版出版紀念>> to which I referred several times. I also shared some examples from verses which have been further revised and will soon appear in the most recent revision of TCV-2017.

Over the two days we heard 20-minute reports on the history of Bible translation plus news about current progress, challenges and thanksgivings from representatives from the Truku, Paiwan, Bunun, Tayal, Sediq, Amis, Pinuyumayan, Tsou and Ngudradrekai teams.

Assistant General Secretary, Elder Robin Yu, brought greetings from the BSTWN. He also shared news about the BSTWN’s move to a new address, the BSTWN’s 60th anniversary celebration in Taipei on November 26, 2016, and a jointly sponsored UBS/BSTWN Bible translators training workshop planned for August 21-28, 2017.

Linguistics professor Dr Li Tai-yuan李台元gave a special lecture on the topic <原住民族語生態分析> or <民族發展與族語的書面化> “A People’s Development and the Literation of their Indigenous Language.” Dr Li has just published an important book based on his doctoral thesis called <台灣原住民族語言的書面化歷程> The Literation of Taiwanese Aboriginal Languages (Sept 2016). He thanked God and all the teams present for being his language informants and helpers during the making of his book. He especially noted the vital role of indigenous Bible translation in the preservation and development of indigenous languages in Taiwan.

Tuesday morning devotions were led by Tayal team member Rev Hetay Hayung, who gave an excellent exposition of Ezk 16:1-43. Hetay has written for the PCT’s “Reading with New Eyes” Bible devotions series. I first met him in the summer of 2016. We enjoy working together on the Tayal Bible. We heard another lecture from my friend and gifted Paiwan translator Rev Tjukar on the topic <PCT 原住民族語翻譯宣教和關連性> which explored the relationship between indigenous Bible translation and the PCT’s holistic mission work in Taiwan. The seminar closed with a lively lecture and pep-talk by my dear old friend Rev Sing Olam (BSTWN Board member, Amis translator, and former Secretary of the PCT’s Indigenous Mission Committee) on the topic <聖經翻譯的故事與聖經故事> “The Story of Bible Translation and Bible Stories.” He made many important points and commented on the kind of proofreading every team should do near the end of their projects before final typesetting. He also suggested that we should attend one another’s Bible publication and thanksgiving services—a great idea which we hope to realize in June 2017 when the Ngudradrekai (Drekay) Bible is published.

This was an excellent event, both for the continuing education of translation teams, and for teams to encourage one another to press on and keep trusting in God as they work through all the challenges of translating the Bible. Some suggested the PCT and BSTWN host this kind of continuing education and fellowship seminar once a year or once every two years. I hope we can too.