

AI & the Privilege of the First Draft - with Jeff and Judy Heath
15/12/2025 | 51 mins.
Jeff and Judy Heath join us in this episode to talk about their recent presentation at the Bible Translation conference called The Privilege of the First Draft, which critically examines the technical and ethical implications of using Artificial Intelligence tools, specifically Scripture Forge, to generate initial drafts of Bible translations. The paper highlights that AI-drafted texts in their target language demonstrated numerous problems. They explore the limitations of AI, such as its inability to understand meaning, its dependence on limited training data for minority languages, and the risks of cognitive offloading for human translators. Ultimately, the paper concludes with a strong recommendation that the essential "privilege of first draft" should be reserved for in-culture, first-language speakers to preserve the human, spiritual, and cultural integrity of the translation process.Write to [email protected] for a copy of the unpublished paper.Bibliography for further study.website | books | twitter | music | Hebrew | articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Oral vs. Written English: A Case Study of Jonah by Christine Doi
27/11/2025 | 44 mins.
Read the thesis.Listen to the SEB version of Jonah.I recently came across this new master’s thesis out of Dallas International University by Christine Doi on differences between oral and written English. It’s fascinating, but I know most people won’t have time to read all 166 pages of it. So I went ahead and generated a NotebookLM summary of it for you, and it turned out to be amazing. I hope you find it as useful and engaging as I did.Abstract: This thesis explores differences between spoken American English and written American English through a comparative analysis of two written translations of Jonah withan oral translation of Jonah. The author outlines research elements of analysis pertaining to the academic fields of orality studies, emotion studies, and prosody studies. Additional relevant elements regarding discourse analysis and contextual background of the source material are also covered. The author outlines the methodology of the analysis resulting in a two-part comparative analysis: a data analysis of features, and a qualitative analysis comparing the translations side-by-side. Included in both parts of the analysis are small-scope prosodic analyses of features of interest. The author observes, as a result from this analysis, differences in word and clause length, emotional coding, explication, and verbdiversity among other findings. These findings contribute evidence to the discussion regarding differences between oral and written language.website | books | twitter | music | Hebrew | articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Translation Principles from 1877 - part 6
24/11/2025 | 25 mins.
In this episode we conclude our journey through the 1877 book Suggestions for Translators, Editors, and Revisers of the Bible by the Reverend R.B. Girdlestone.The Problem with Creative Commons SharealikeGet a free copy of Abolish the Jesus Trade"Interesting Book Summaries from Andrew Case" podcast"Libros Importantes" podcastwebsite | books | twitter | music | Hebrew | articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Translation Principles from 1877 - part 5
04/11/2025 | 17 mins.
In this episode we continue working our way through the 1877 book Suggestions for Translators, Editors, and Revisers of the Bible by the Reverend R.B. Girdlestone, who was a superintendent of the translating and editorial department of the British and Foreign Bible Society. We cover the following sections:Marginal referencesItalics and other modes of marking supplementary wordswebsite | books | twitter | music | Hebrew | articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Translation Principles from 1877 - part 4
27/10/2025 | 24 mins.
In this episode we continue working our way through the 1877 book Suggestions for Translators, Editors, and Revisers of the Bible by the Reverend R.B. Girdlestone, who was a superintendent of the translating and editorial department of the British and Foreign Bible Society. We cover the following sections:Cases in which a translator is liable to be misled by the English BibleAlternative renderings, explanations of proper names, etc.Marginal referenceswebsite | books | twitter | music | Hebrew | articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline



Working for the Word - a Bible translation podcast