Field testing

The most reliable way I know of to ensure that your translation is accurately and clearly communicating the meanings that you want it to is to field test it with a wide range of speakers within the audience that you intend to use that translation. If you want children to use your translation, then you must field test it with children. If you want new believers, who know little about the Bible, then you need to test your translation with them.

Over the years I have created a number of surveys for testing overall translation categories, as well as surveys testing wordings in specific English Bible versions. To view the surveys, or, better yet, to view and take them, click on the title to this post.

A few months ago the Internet service that provided a view of voting results so far, after a person answered one of the surveys, stopped its service. I then had to use a less efficient backup service. When I can find time (in very short supply these days as I push hard to complete our Cheyenne Bible translation work before the end of the fiscal year), I want to convert the surveys over to a format which can be used by one or two new polling services, to display voting results.

Categories: field testing, Bible translation