Supporting local translators
by Lachlan Webb
When I tell people that I’m working on the Tiwi translation of the Bible, a common question people ask is, ‘When will you learn Tiwi? How can you help translate if you don’t know the language itself?’ Tiwi is considered a very difficult language. You can say a great deal in a single word, albeit a word that may have more letters than the average alphabet. Add to that many thousands of years of cultural practices and it is unfortunately easy to misunderstand something, even if you have a dictionary in hand!
So then, who does the translation? People who have used Tiwi all their lives – those from the Tiwi Islands, just 80 kilometres north of Darwin. There is a great need for Tiwi translators. The Tiwi people have a strong church, and a strong language. They should be the ones with the opportunity to bring the Bible into their language. It is here that my role as a translation advisor, and a translation teacher, fits in.
Wycliffe Australia helps empower local translators through its partner organisations, including the Australian Society for Indigenous Languages (AuSIL) and Nungalinya College. AuSIL serves as the primary translation arm of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in Australia. Nungalinya College is an Indigenous training college for equipping Indigenous Christians. Nungalinya provides training in a number of TAFE-level certificates, up to a Cert. IV in Ministry and Theology.
I’m currently teaching the Cert. II in Indigenous Translating to a cohort of Tiwi translators. There are currently around 16 Tiwi students who started the three-year course in 2025. I feel for the students as we slog through grammar and morphology but seeing them come to life when we dig into translation work is inspiring. The classroom shifts from the quiet murmur of grinding intellectual work to a vibrant, noisy and animated discussion. During a class last year, I discovered that the cohort had gathered over the weekend to complete a translation of a song we’d been learning in class. That’s enthusiasm!
When the students have finished their course, and even before that, some will go on to be Bible translators. At the moment, they have started a translation club at church, such is their desire for a Tiwi Bible. To have the opportunity to work with them day to day to achieve their goals is amazing, and Wycliffe Australia is supporting them in every step of the process.
Thanks for your patience...