1. The Role of Linguistics in SE/Translation Projects Implementing CLIC in Eurasia November 2015 – Richard Gravina

2. Big Goal Linguists serve Bible Translation by providing just-in-time training to equip translators and consultants with the linguistic competencies that they need to do their work

3. Looking Back SIL was founded in 1934 to provide linguistics training for translators Linguistics developed to become the public identity of SIL Vision 2025 renewed the focus on Bible Translation

4. The Status of Linguistics Formerly ‘top dog’ Now struggling to find its new identity It has a renewed role in serving Bible Translation and Language Development Servant role

5. The Role of Linguistics

6. CLIC Philosophy Linguistics should be viewed as a set of competencies for translators The role of linguists is to help translators acquire those competencies Translators here refers to both the mother- tongue translators (MTT) and the outside facilitators (OTT)

7. CLIC Philosophy Translators do not need to be able to do linguistic analysis Translators do not need to be able to write linguistic papers

8. The Role of Linguists Before knowledge can be passed on, it must be acquired 1.Linguists acquire the knowledge – reading and analysis 2.Linguists develop means of passing on the knowledge – training and mentoring

9. Areas to Cover The competencies don’t cover every area of linguistics Topics relating to Translation Principles Topics relating to Discourse Analysis Language-specific topics relevant to Translation

10. Limited Access Projects The projects may be at different stages There is sometimes a reasonable amount of published linguistic work The languages can be quite close in terms of their linguistics Thus, there is a good scope for making generalisations and teaching them The limited-access context requires efficient working

11. Translator Perspective Specific objectives for data/text collection Combination of mentoring and workshops to acquire competencies

12. Translator Perspective Data is kept in a FLEx template project Findings are recorded in ‘template’ documents No requirement for a formal write up, except for an orthography statement Some of this can be delegated to a linguist

13. Translator Perspective The work required is finite and explicit Linguistics is not made into a big deal There is space for other activities

14. Linguists - Background Work with data and read literature to understand the features of the language family Prepare data collection guides and results templates Prepare a FLEx project as a template

15. Linguistics - Foreground Work through the steps with translation teams – though there may be problems of access to language informants, management issues Keep notes Give advanced FLEx training on the go Regular one-to-one sessions Design and lead workshops

16. Workshop Goals Communicate the theory See how the language works Apply it to translation Implementation is partially successful

17. Happy People Linguists are happy because they have big, specific projects to work on they get to connect with projects they have data to write papers about Translators and Exegetes are happy because they don’t need to do lots of linguistic analysis they feel in control of texts in the language they can produce better translations

18. Happy People Translation consultants are happy because Teams know about discourse Teams know what is happening in the text They have reference documents Linguistic consultants are happy because They get to work with people who like linguistics They get to work with data

19. Big Goal To serve Bible Translation by equipping translators and consultants