The Eurasia Region held its first Manual Translation Summit in early February in Budapest, Hungary, a regional effort to train teams involved with translating the Church of the Nazarene Manual.

There were 10 language groups represented. Some of these groups have already begun updating their translations of the Manual to the current version (2013-2017). Others have an older version – 2005-2009 or even 1997- 2001. Other language groups don’t yet have a Manual, so their first priority is translating the Articles of Faith section.

Before any section of the Manual is translated, each language’s translation team needs to establish an agreed-upon lexicon of how terms will be consistently translated — not only throughout the Manual, but also in other Nazarene publications. These include both theological terms like “entire sanctification” and organizational terms like “District Advisory Board.”

Creating a “Nazarene lexicon” proves to be a complex task, as there are numerous technical and theological terms in the original English version that have no exact counterpart in some other languages. This means that translators need to find creative ways to retain the meaning of these English words when explaining them or replacing them with similar words in their own languages.

“’Superintendent’ is a strange word,” said Jonathan Phillips, the literature coordinator for Romania, who organized the summit, modeled after a similar summit held in South Carolina, USA, in early 2014. “How do you translate ‘superintendent’ into Bulgarian or Croatian when they don’t have a word that quite says that with the same connotations that the English word has?”

Finding an accurate translation of the Manual is critical to the unity and development of the church in every language group where the church has a presence.

“It’s important that the essentials of the Church of the Nazarene remain the same throughout the denomination,” Phillips said. The translation of the Manual makes it possible for “a single denominational identity — who we are, what we believe, and how we function — to be accessible to church leaders in their native languages.”

Translators also need to be careful to use theological terminology in their own language that shares the meanings of the Wesleyan-Arminian-rooted theological terms used in English in the Church of the Nazarene, which was founded in the U.S. before expanding to 159 world areas.

“There are other theological traditions in the country (of Hungary), and it’s so easy to automatically use terminology that the Calvinists or Catholics might use, because it’s in the culture, but then it has a different connotation,” said Imre Gusztin, the literature coordinator for Hungary.

Getting together and discussing different obstacles and challenges was helpful to the different language group representatives.

“We shared examples from the Hungarian translation process that we thought were unique problems and others said, ‘Oh, we are struggling with the same thing. How did you solve it?’ It gives you ideas and opens up a new way of thinking about how to respond to it,” Imre said.

Scott Stargel, head of Global Nazarene Publications, led the summit. Since many of the participants are also involved with literature translation projects beyond the Manual, he provided training on the Nazarene literature translation process. He also introduced the group to the Wesleyan-Holiness Digital Library, a free, multilingual website that shares works related to Wesleyan-Holiness literature and scholarly research.

Finally, Stargel provided training for an open source software program used by professional translators called OmegaT. It learns terms and expressions from the translator, and remembers them when the translator encounters them again later in the translation process. It also has a spellchecker for most languages.

“We wish we had this years ago," Maria Gusztin said. "I think this new software will ease the work.” 

--Church of the Nazarene Eurasia Region