Carl & Caroline High’s Path to Bible Translating in Central Europe
When Carl High was growing up in Coventry Church during the 1950s, it had a reputation for being a family church with deep roots dating back to Switzerland and Southern Germany of the early 1700s. This heritage, combined with the parallels in his own family history, became a point of interest for Carl. It was a contributing factor to his desire to experience a German-speaking culture while he was in eleventh grade. So, during his senior year in high school from 1966-67, Carl participated in an International Christian Youth Exchange (ICYE) program in Vienna, Austria. At that time, the Brethren Church sponsored high school student exchanges to support peace efforts in Europe following World War II. Needless to say, for a sixteen-year-old, the year living with an Austrian family and attending Austrian school left an indelible impression! Unknowingly, this year abroad provided him with an interesting cross-cultural skill set, fluency in German, and a rudimentary understanding of the Austrian dialect that would serve him well in the distant future.
It wasn’t until Carl was a student at Penn State, working on his master’s degree in architectural engineering in the fall of 1973, that he made a life-changing decision to believe in Jesus Christ. Through his interactions with fraternity brothers who were believers and his reading of John’s eyewitness accounts, he began to understand more clearly the message and purpose of Christ’s life and death on earth. Over the next two years of study, he felt that God was calling him to use his training and abilities in building men, not architectural projects.
In 1976, Carl connected with Campus Crusade for Christ, now Cru, which was developing outreach teams to travel to the countries that formerly made up the Communist Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc. However, Carl eventually ended up on the University of Vienna outreach team, working with university students and young professionals located in Vienna, Austria. In 1983, when Carl and Caroline got married, Caroline left her outreach in Central Europe and joined him in Austria.
As they worked with university students, they discovered that although these students were high academic achievers, they found working with biblical texts quite challenging. German translations, along with many other translations of European languages, had been heavily influenced by the language of the Reformation bibles produced in the sixteenth century. Although revisions were introduced to reflect changes in language usage, these changes tended to be superficial, leaving the language of the original translation unaltered. The result was a very complex, technical German with an infusion of Latin-based words. Additionally, the language of these Reformation translations represented a one-for-one style of translating, where for every Greek word, there needed to be an equivalent word in the target language without a shift in word order. This approach neglected the overall context of the writing and its influence on the idiomatic expression, sacrificing reader comprehension for what seemed to be accuracy.
In the late 1980s, Communist Eastern Europe began to erupt as people sought freedom from the yoke of the Communist state. It was also during this tumultuous time that many East European believers began to search for new translations in their language. For many of these languages, there had been no new translations produced since the end of the 1800s. In Ukraine, for example, the Ukrainian language had been suppressed for many decades under Russian occupation. There was a dearth of books printed in Ukrainian, not to mention biblical texts.
As a result of these circumstances, a small group of friends, along with Carl and Caroline, started an organization called Context Scripture Translating in the early 1990s to help people become translators in their own language groups in order to address these translation needs. Translating the New Testament Greek into a target language not only requires the translator to first have a contextual understanding of all the New Testament writings, but also a good understanding of New Testament Greek and the associated reference works in the target language. However, the missing part of enabling people to become translators is a simple, straightforward process of translating from the source language, Koine Greek, to their own target language. The key to this process was developing the Greek Line Text, a markup text that aids the translator in quickly identifying the sentence structure and critical parts of the text for translation.
Currently, Carl is involved with a small, two-man team in Poland that is using this approach to translate the Greek text into Polish. They are targeting the segment of the Polish language spoken by individuals with a university-level education. They began their translating project in March 2022. This was the first implementation of this process, so Carl continues to guide the translation team, helping to navigate problems and make improvements to the overall process. He also continues to work on the Greek Line texts, preparing and editing them for the translation process.
Although Caroline and Carl returned from Austria in 2017 after over 40 years of mission service in Central Europe, they want to continue using their expertise to help others gain a contextual understanding of the New Testament texts, as well as help individuals in other language groups begin their own grassroots translating projects.
It wasn’t until Carl was a student at Penn State, working on his master’s degree in architectural engineering in the fall of 1973, that he made a life-changing decision to believe in Jesus Christ. Through his interactions with fraternity brothers who were believers and his reading of John’s eyewitness accounts, he began to understand more clearly the message and purpose of Christ’s life and death on earth. Over the next two years of study, he felt that God was calling him to use his training and abilities in building men, not architectural projects.
In 1976, Carl connected with Campus Crusade for Christ, now Cru, which was developing outreach teams to travel to the countries that formerly made up the Communist Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc. However, Carl eventually ended up on the University of Vienna outreach team, working with university students and young professionals located in Vienna, Austria. In 1983, when Carl and Caroline got married, Caroline left her outreach in Central Europe and joined him in Austria.
As they worked with university students, they discovered that although these students were high academic achievers, they found working with biblical texts quite challenging. German translations, along with many other translations of European languages, had been heavily influenced by the language of the Reformation bibles produced in the sixteenth century. Although revisions were introduced to reflect changes in language usage, these changes tended to be superficial, leaving the language of the original translation unaltered. The result was a very complex, technical German with an infusion of Latin-based words. Additionally, the language of these Reformation translations represented a one-for-one style of translating, where for every Greek word, there needed to be an equivalent word in the target language without a shift in word order. This approach neglected the overall context of the writing and its influence on the idiomatic expression, sacrificing reader comprehension for what seemed to be accuracy.
In the late 1980s, Communist Eastern Europe began to erupt as people sought freedom from the yoke of the Communist state. It was also during this tumultuous time that many East European believers began to search for new translations in their language. For many of these languages, there had been no new translations produced since the end of the 1800s. In Ukraine, for example, the Ukrainian language had been suppressed for many decades under Russian occupation. There was a dearth of books printed in Ukrainian, not to mention biblical texts.
As a result of these circumstances, a small group of friends, along with Carl and Caroline, started an organization called Context Scripture Translating in the early 1990s to help people become translators in their own language groups in order to address these translation needs. Translating the New Testament Greek into a target language not only requires the translator to first have a contextual understanding of all the New Testament writings, but also a good understanding of New Testament Greek and the associated reference works in the target language. However, the missing part of enabling people to become translators is a simple, straightforward process of translating from the source language, Koine Greek, to their own target language. The key to this process was developing the Greek Line Text, a markup text that aids the translator in quickly identifying the sentence structure and critical parts of the text for translation.
Currently, Carl is involved with a small, two-man team in Poland that is using this approach to translate the Greek text into Polish. They are targeting the segment of the Polish language spoken by individuals with a university-level education. They began their translating project in March 2022. This was the first implementation of this process, so Carl continues to guide the translation team, helping to navigate problems and make improvements to the overall process. He also continues to work on the Greek Line texts, preparing and editing them for the translation process.
Although Caroline and Carl returned from Austria in 2017 after over 40 years of mission service in Central Europe, they want to continue using their expertise to help others gain a contextual understanding of the New Testament texts, as well as help individuals in other language groups begin their own grassroots translating projects.