Overview of Church and Community Based (CBBT) QA Cycle
Empowering churches and communities for scalable Bible translation through an innovative, church-centered QA cycle.
The CBBT Cycle is designed to serve the church’s needs by being:
Clear and accessible
Flexible enough to adapt to local needs while still ensuring quality translation
Sustainable by the local and regional church so that they might continue to revise the translations as their knowledge of and engagement with Scripture grows
Scalable to serve a broad variety of translation projects without dramatically increasing Bible Agency support structures
CBBT is successful when the church is empowered for quality Bible translation by processes that are rooted in their experience and expertise. Empowering the church requires quality assurance processes that enable translation at a pace and scope that support church ministry goals.
The Innovation Lab is experimenting with how the church and community might lead in quality assurance throughout the entire translation process. The Lab has developed a process consisting of 5 stages. Each of these stages support and reinforce one another, so the result is a cohesive and complete Bible translation process. However, each of these stages can also be implemented and tested individually, or selectively incorporated within established projects.
Sustainable Bible Translation as a Ministry of the Church and Community
The 5 components of sustainable Bible translation as a ministry of church and community based Bible translation (a.k.a. CBBT) are:
Capacity Building—Building capacity in the church and community for sustainable ongoing translation ministry is central to CBBT. This means that the local church is at the center of decision-making, resourcing, and quality assessment processes of Bible translation programs in locally relevant ways. The church’s capacity for Bible translation grows as it engages more deeply with Scripture through conversational exegesis and through the various review and testing stages. Increased engagement with Scripture builds capacity within the community to translate more; it is a constructive cycle.
Community Engagement and Conversational Drafting—Quality translation begins with Scripture Engagement, deep understanding of the meaning of Scripture, and application of Scripture within the local community. The Lab recommends a process of multimodal and conversational (1) discovery, (2) internalization, and (3) performance.
Review by Quality Assurance Community—A Quality Assurance Community facilitated by a church leader for translation (often referred to as a Scripture Authentication Elder) uses and tests the translation within the community and church. An external QA Mentor may also provide support as needed.
Regional Church Leader Authentication—Church leaders beyond the local community are responsible for (a) ensuring best practices and processes were followed and (b) authenticating the translation. A Scripture Review Board could even benefit established projects by allowing greater visibility into translation processes and increasing accountability to church leadership.
Iterative Publication and Revision—Translation is iterative. As Scripture transforms the community, deeper understanding of Scripture leads to further revision and translation.
Follow our page for upcoming newsletters, where we’ll dive deeper into Stages 2 and 3 of the CBBT Cycle and explore their impact on quality Bible translation.
This looks great, Isabella. At first glance I was concerned because it was CBBT but the overview graphic didn't mention the church until the end, but when you read the descriptions it is clear the church is engaged and taking ownership from the very beginning and all through the process