ABSTRACT
This book is built upon a few foundational premises. I hope that by now I have convinced you of their importance. The first foundational premise is the importance of context in communication in general, and in Bible translation in particular. Communication always involves both text and context, so providing a receptor group with the translated text only provides them with part of what they need to be able to understand the author’s meaning. If an audience lacks the intended contextual background information, they cannot adequately understand the text even though it is in their mother tongue. Translators and communicators must give as much attention to context as they do to text if they hope to succeed in their communication efforts. Developments in communication theory provide us with conceptual tools to understand how context is selected and built in the process of communication. Bible translators cannot afford to ignore these developments, given the importance of their communicative task.
