Chiang Mai, Thailand  ·  May 23–26, 2026
EMDC “Psalms Alive!” Workshop

On the first morning of the EMDC workshop, Nikki Mustin made an argument that stops people in their tracks. One-third of the Bible is poetry. For centuries, that poetry has largely been translated as prose — because the tools for translating it as poetry didn’t exist, and the assumption was that remaining faithful to the meaning was enough. Beauty could be sacrificed if content was preserved.

Scriptura’s position, sharpened by years of field work and linguistic scholarship, is that this assumption is wrong. In poetry, beauty and meaning are not separable. The emotional register of a psalm, the weight of its imagery, the rhythm of its lines — these aren’t decorative. They are the meaning.

“If not beautiful, a poem translation is not accurate.”

For practitioners in that room — translators who had spent careers on accuracy — the claim reframed the work they’d already done. For those from arts backgrounds, it validated what they’d always sensed but struggled to argue for in translation committee meetings. The conversation continued across all four days. It’s still continuing.