Who is the Dumb Consultant Who Approved This? (Oh, It Was Me!) How Ethical is Parachute Consulting?

The new translation project model 1) puts undue pressure on the consultant and 2) lends itself to finished translations still leaving much to be desired. We can do better and have done better.

This paper will be a testimonial of my experiences as a translation consultant in two translation projects in Nigeria. I will describe these two projects and how I got involved, and mention that I am one of the rare consultants who has consulted every book in the New Testaments of each of these two projects. While I was not encouraged to learn these languages, after consulting with each one for 18 years, I nevertheless picked up a good part of the vocabulary and grammar of these languages, and I could eventually figure out the translation without relying on the back translation. Toward the end of each project, when I went back and looked at what I approved of in the early books, I saw a massive number of issues I missed. These include spelling, word division, punctuation, grammatical issues, exegetical choices, and even naturalness issues. I never would have discovered these issues if I had not remained with each project from beginning to end.

Yet, most of these new translation projects do not function this way. Often consultants parachute in and consult only a book or two. They will inevitably miss many issues. Yet these translations are being published.

I will list some of the types of issues I initially missed and argue that, in our western bent to complete projects more quickly, we are sacrificing quality. Let’s seek a more ethical approach.