Jill Zwyghuizen
Education
Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, Cedarville University (with a Minor in Greek).
Master of Theology in Bible Translation, Dallas Theological Seminary.
Currently working on a Ph.D. in Old Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary.
Professional Experience
Instructor of Mathematics, Cedarville University.
I’ve also done quite a bit of tutoring for a wide variety of subjects (most commonly for New Testament studies and for math).
Personal
I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and moved to Dallas for grad school. I have always loved learning new languages. I can speak French, some Spanish, a tiny bit of Mandarin Chinese, and I’m working on Modern Hebrew. I can read biblical Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and several other ancient Semitic languages. I also love to travel and experience new cultures.
I first began to consider getting involved in missions as a high school student on a short term missions trip to the Philippines. While I was in college I took Greek and Hebrew and fell in love with the languages. It was then that I began to consider getting involved with Bible translation. I did an internship with Bibles International (the translation branch of Baptist Mid-Missions) before I moved to Dallas. As part of that internship I got to spend a month in Myanmar (Burma) helping out with some translation projects. I now work for BI as an adjunct translation consultant and plan to join fulltime once I finish my Ph.D.
Basically what a translation consultant does is to check Bible translations for accuracy against the original languages. Usually a local pastor will translate the text from English (or French or Spanish) into their native language. Then someone else who is a native speaker of that language back-translates word for word into English. Then the consultant comes in and checks the back-translation against the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic text. So right now I’m in school working on becoming an expert in the biblical languages so that I can help the translators make sure their translations are accurate.
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