The Bible at Cultural Crossroads: From Translation to Communication

by Harriet Hill

“We have had the Bible in our language, but we still couldn’t understand what it meant.” That’s what Hill’s main assistant said to her when she was conducting the research for this book. Why can’t Bibles, even ones that are translated well, be understood? And what can be done about it?

St. Jerome Publishing, 2 Maple Road West, Brooklands, Manchester M23 9HH, UK, 2006, 280 pages, £25.00.

—Reviewed by Wayne Leman, SIL, North American Branch.

“We have had the Bible in our language, but we still couldn’t understand what it meant.” That’s what Hill’s main assistant said to her when she was conducting the research for this book. Why can’t Bibles, even ones that are translated well, be understood? And what can be done about it?

Hill answers these questions in this major rewrite of her dissertation submitted to Fuller Theological Seminary. She writes from her experience as an SIL linguist in Africa, where she helped translate the Bible for the Adioukrou people of Côte d’Ivoire.

Gaps between the cultural contexts in which the Bible was written and those of people for whom it is translated create problems for understanding the Bible. Hill became so concerned about this issue that she conducted field research in which she tested several translated Bible passages. She presented them to Adioukrou with varying amounts of information concerning the original biblical contexts. Not surprisingly, understanding of the translation increased significantly as the cultural context of a passage was clarified. More than twenty percent of this book is made up of rich appendices of Hill’s field tests and results.

Hill describes several kinds of “contextual adjustment materials” which increase understanding, including Bible book introductions, section headings, footnotes, illustrations, glossaries, drama and Bible storytelling. We could also mention Bible study, Bible background books and Bible classes.

Hill writes from the perspective of Relevance Theory (RT), which emphasizes that much communicated meaning is unstated. We figure out unstated meanings inferentially.

This book reads best when Hill writes in her own voice—clear and personable, often with a touch of humor. It is more difficult to read when she quotes from or uses the technical vocabulary of RT. Ironically, while RT is about communication, its practitioners often write in a way that is difficult for others to understand, as when Hill quotes, “An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the positive cognitive effects achieved when it is optimally processed are large.”

Fortunately, it is possible to skip sentences such as these and gain a great deal from the rest of the book. Although it would be helpful if there were a glossary explaining technical terms used in the book, it is nonetheless valuable for its clear, practical suggestions for how Bible translators and other missiologists can better communicate to people who have cultural assumptions that differ from those of the Bible.

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