Computer Assisted Adaptive Translation for the Neurodiverse and Other Audiences

In several meetings of the Neurodiversity, Bible Translation, and the Church Group, which I lead, we discussed what adaptations might be needed in a Bible translation in order to make the text easier to understand for neurodiverse people. As we looked at the possible adjustments related to figures of speech, theory of mind, and poetry we quickly discovered that many adjustments would be needed and not every neurodiverse person would want or need every possible adjustment. In order to produce a translation acceptable to each individual in the target audience would require many different translations. There was no way that this would be feasible.

I suggested producing a translation which had all of the adjustments possible with each adjustment categorised. Based on the preferences of the end user the computer would produce a text which only contained the adjustments preferred by the user.

The adjustments preferred could be selected manually or inferred by a short preferences test. In principle this could be used for other audiences – different dialects or denominations. For this paper examples will use the Berean family of texts and Open Translator’s Notes and, hopefully, the meaning will be kept the same despite the adjustments. Examples will be from Jude.