Manual Work

There’s a difference between doing “manual work” and doing “Manual work.” The former demands physical activity such as construction or heavy lifting; the latter involves sitting at a computer all day. Can you guess which one I’ve been doing?

The Manual of the Church of the Nazarene is a little book which contains within it the history, doctrines, and organizational structure of the Church of the Nazarene. It is updated every 4 years by the church’s General Assembly.

Even though the Church of the Nazarene has been in Romania for 20 years, we still don’t have a complete translation of the Manual. Having a translation of the Manual is important, especially for those preparing for ministry – not only so they understand the history, polity, and beliefs of our denomination, but also so they are able to communicate this clearly in their language to others.

I’ve been asked to serve as part of a new committee to work on the translation and compilation of the Manual, along with both Romanians and other missionaries. We’ll have our first meeting in September, but I’ve been working on some preparatory work already.

One of our first tasks will be to create a lexicon of “Nazarene terms.” In other words, we need to make sure words are translated consistently throughout the Manual. Without such a lexicon, one translator may translate a term one way and another translator could translate the same term into a different Romanian word. We need to find the translation which best conveys the meaning of the English word when translated. To give just one example, a minister’s “local license” could be translated as “licența locală.” This sounds correct (locală sounds like local and licența sounds like license), but it conveys the wrong concept. The term licența is used in Romanian to refer to a university degree. If we would use this translation, people would think that the local church is giving a university degree to someone who has a call to ministry!

Once we have an agreed-upon vocabulary, we’ll pick up the translation work. Thankfully, we’re not starting from scratch. Back in the late 1990s, translation work began on the then-current 1997-2001 edition of the Manual. Most, but not all, of this edition was translated. However, since a lexicon of terms hadn't been established, the translator(s) used different Romanian terms throughout the Manual for the same English term. Unfortunately, the draft was never edited into a final copy of the Manual. A few years later, translation work began on the 2005-2009 Manual. At that time, however, only a few sections were translated before translation work stopped.

So – that means we have the first 2/3 of the 1997-2001 Manual, the first 1/3 of the 2005-2009 Manual, but our goal is to have 100% of the current 2009-2013 Manual. This is where my current “Manual work” comes in. Before our Manual translation committee meets for the first time in September, I’m working to compile a draft in Romanian which combines these previous translations so the Manual committee has a single starting place.

First, I took the parts of the 2005-2009 Romanian translation and added to it the changes (in English) made at the 2009 General Assembly. Then I started typing the 1997-2001 Romanian translation (since we only have a printed copy of it). While typing, I’m comparing the English versions of both the 1997-2001 Manual and the 2009-2013 Manual, being certain to insert the updates (again, in English) into what I type.

With this preparatory work out of the way, the Manual translation team can translate the final 1/3 of the Manual, as well as the 2009 updates that I inserted in English, in order to complete a draft of the Manual in Romanian.

And then the editing process can begin….