Pike Center awards three small grants

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. We are pleased to announce that three grants have been awarded in the latest cycle of this program.

$3,000 has been awarded to Steve Nicolle for a project entitled “Conditionals in the Greek New Testament: A Guide for Translators.” There are around 600 grammatically marked conditional clauses in the original text of the New Testament, representing a variety of functions. The functions of conditionals in Greek argumentation and instruction are often not those of conditional constructions in other languages, thus posing a problem for speakers of those languages who want to translate the New Testament. The project will produce a database that analyzes the function of every conditional in the Greek New Testament, along with a guide that will help translators to translate them naturally and clearly according to the styles of argumentation and instruction that are appropriate for their languages. Dr. Nicolle is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Canada Institute of Linguistics (Trinity Western University) and a Fellow of the Pike Center; he holds a D.Phil. in Linguistics from the University of York.

$2,790 has been awarded to June Dickie for a project entitled “Two Books on Composing and Performing Psalms.”   Psalms are the Scriptures which speak most to people undergoing difficult times. They also have great potential for community engagement through performance. Over the past five years, Dr. Dickie has worked with youth in South Africa to compose and perform psalms for their communities. This work has resulted in over twenty articles in peer-reviewed journals, but has yet to reach the practitioners who could benefit from her research. The grant will allow her to produce a pair of openly accessible ebooks that will equip Bible translators, Scripture engagement workers, and church leaders to help language communities on the margins to engage with psalms through composing and performing their own versions. Dr. Dickie is a researcher and translation consultant with Wycliffe South Africa and a Pike Scholar; she holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. 

$1,500 has been awarded to Stephen Daley for a project entitled “Textual Choices in the Book of Ezra.”   Those who would translate the Old Testament into one of the many languages of the world will encounter difficulties with the Hebrew source text in which different ancient manuscripts give witness to different versions of the text. The translator wonders which variant to adopt as best reflecting the original text. This grant will allow Dr. Daley to produce a guide for translators to textual variants in the book of Ezra. The project is a pilot test of the methodology for a Common Text Project which is developed in his recent monograph, The Textual Basis of English Translations of the Hebrew Bible (2019, Brill). Dr. Daley is a translation consultant with the Eurasia Area of SIL International; he holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.