What oral communication can accomplish in Bible translation projects that print communication alone cannot
Read Literacy, Orality, and the Web, Part One (How to Make an Oral Preference Society Prefer Reading).
What Scripture Communication Medium Should Come First?
Before going any further, let me say that suggesting a primarily oral society should remain in their primary oral communication situation is soft racism. People who promote this don’t realize that such a comment reveals racial bias. Some Africans interpret Western proponents of orality as “white people implying that Africans can be kept in a state of illiteracy because this is their natural and preferred state.” The goal of this article is to examine natural scripture distribution; it is about diffusion through multiple paths.
If we now understand the importance of oral scripture distribution, why do so many mission agencies still assume that printed scripture should precede oral scriptures? If they are supportive of non-print media in general, why do they still view those as secondary? There are a number of reasons.
First, it may be that print learners simply cannot conceive of how an oral medium can effectively and accurately transmit the scripture text. It is difficult for people from a print culture to believe people from an oral culture can learn and recall significant amounts of information with accuracy by just hearing it. This is one reason why literacy strategists believe reading is the only legitimate method for accessing scripture. Anything less would produce inconsistencies and inaccuracies because of memory lapses.
Literacy workers’ concern about accuracy may be well-founded if they assume verbatim retelling of a written text. However, this does not mean oral cultures are incapable of recalling important themes and concepts by hearing ...
from
http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/s_1_NjENiuc/literacy-orality-and-web-part-two.html
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