Grant awarded for research into ancient translation techniques

Through its Small Grants Program, the Pike Center sponsors research and publication that address issues faced by language communities on the margins of society. The program solicits grant applications three times per year, but the previous cycle was an apparent victim of pandemic-related restrictions on travel as no applications were received.  We are pleased to announce that a suitable application was received in the latest cycle and a new grant has been awarded.

$1,975 has been awarded to Dr. Theo van der Louw for a project entitled “Translation Theory and Translation Techniques in the Septuagint and Their Relevance for the Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible.” This research addresses a problem faced by translators of the Old Testament into the thousands of languages of the world, namely, the problem of evaluating variants in the manuscript source texts to help identify the probable original text.  The research hypothesis is that a better understanding of the translation techniques of the Septuagint translators will help us to better explain the “deviant” renderings in the Septuagint—helping to identify when they reflect translation techniques versus when they give evidence for an actual variant in the Hebrew source text. Dr. van der Louw is a Translation Consultant with SIL International; he holds a Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.