My take on the translation process…

Above: Ben listens to discussions during devotions. Usually the translators take turns covering the passage they will be working on during their devotion time. Often they will interact with each other and talk about where they might have difficulty in translating the section.

At times the translation process has baffled me…how does one take a previously unwritten language and get into a readable form? How does that writing turn into God’s Word? This post is an attempt for me to speak about the process as simply as I can as the wife of a translator/linguist. I hope I can do it justice!

We have translators from ten language groups coming to a central location (Arop) in the Aitape West region of Papua New Guinea for workshops. Most of them walk, some coming from as close as a 30 minute walk away, others have to walk all day. We hold five or more workshops every year for four weeks at a time. Right now, Ben is in the last week of a translation workshop in Arop, working with his translators to get Acts ready for consultant checking

So the first major concept is our translators are trained by doing the work themselves. As the translators draft the Scriptures, they read them to each other and talk within their groups. When a difficult concept arises, they discuss it amongst themselves and with their advisor and work out a way to translate it. I’ve heard that they can find concepts like forgiveness and mercy to be difficult to put into a language that doesn’t have those terms. Each of the three groups is made up of language speakers who can understand each other, or at least their languages work in similar ways.

The translators use a program specially designed for them called Paratext. Whenever they input things into their databases, the program remembers what they put. It allows them to access this information for later times, which helps them speed up the translation process. Also this program provides a way to track when and if they make changes and also lets them write comments to each other as a group or to their advisors. I don’t really know how it works but it sounds amazing to me!

Ben is the Onnele advisor, so he sits with the three Onnele language groups. As much as they can, they make their translations similar; however, when something doesn’t make sense or doesn’t work in one of these languages, the translators are free to translate it differently. The advisors will then make comments into Paratext and the translators can interact with them and write notes back.

After going through advisor checks, the translation is ready for consultant checking. The consultant will sit down with our translators, their advisor and several speakers of the language who have not read the drafts. Then comes the comprehension testing and questions to make sure it is understandable and accurate.

Although I’ve simplified the wording of this process, it’s all rather complicated…the advisors and translators are learning about the linguistics of the languages we work with so that things are said in the proper way. They are also doing careful exegesis for the passages covered. Often the translators will ask Ben what the Greek text says, and they are also adept at using Translator’s Workplace, software that provides them with numerous notes and resources. We have been amazed by the dedication of our PNG coworkers, how they pour over commentaries and Bible dictionaries into the evening, until the generator power goes off for the night. They want to see God’s word speaking to their people, and they want to make sure they get it right.

And that, my friends, is my take on the translation process…

Oops! They were not tired of God.

When the Onnele translators were checking over their translation of Acts 2:5 in September, they had to think twice about what the word “numne” meant in this context. Why? Well, because I asked them to.

I know that “numne” can be used with different senses, and sometimes the context doesn’t make it clear. It can mean “to fear” or “to respect,” which is what we were hoping for in this verse. The NASB reads here:

Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven.

It was the translation of the meaning for the word “devout” that we were checking here. The idea of “fear” or “respect” has been used in some translations to express the sense here. The NIV reads:

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.

So at first glance it seemed that the Onnele Goiniri use of “numne” in their translation was alright:

Empo taim namo, nu Juda fai numne God sa nainene taunwamo Jerusalem. Nu uma namo, empo noloni kantri wongkwongkeni.
At this time, Jews who feared God were staying in the city of Jerusalem. These people came from all different countries.

But when I asked the translators what this verse meant in their language — does this refer to Jews who feared God or were tired of him? — they paused, smiled, and simply said, “yes.” It could mean either one, and it really wasn’t clear. It was so unclear that they had to ask me, “Which one is it supposed to mean here?”

So after they compared different English and Pidgin versions, they adjusted their translation so that it reads:

Empo taim namo, nu Juda fai nosinanene God sa nainene Jerusalem. Nu uma namo, empo noloni kantri wongkwongkeni.
At this time, Jews who gave worship to God were staying in Jerusalem. These people came from all different countries.

Okay, now it was clear.

Please pray for the translators of the Aitape West Translation Project. They are meeting again this month to revise their translations of Acts and prepare them for consultant checking next year. Jonathan and Dominic (left and middle pictured above) are the only Onnele translators to arrive for this first week of the workshop.

We only know why Joel is absent: his brother Andrew is deathly sick in town with both malaria and a very bad strain of TB. Please pray for Andrew.

We have no way of knowing why other translators have not arrived yet. Pray that they will continue to numne God, and I don’t mean that they would be tired of him. No, that they would nosinanene him and continue to translate God’s Word so that many others may give worship to him in Spirit and in truth, and in their own language.

Not waiting to see Jesus, I hope

This blog post title can be read in two completely different ways.

1. You could read it with a hopeless and disparaging tone, and perhaps that will get me some blog readers who are curious and ready to bring me into line. As such, the part before the comma has focus and the “I hope” really has the commonly used sense of “I doubt, but for your sake it would be good if you wise up”
2. If you want to get my real meaning, you should read it as a statement with the part before the comma only providing an adverbial restriction to the focus of the statement, “I hope.” This is true wisdom that only comes from above.

Obviously, language can sometimes be really ambiguous. And in Bible translation, often times we need to look closely at the words we use and make sure we’re conveying the right meaning and not some other meaning that can creep in either because of the way that words have multiple senses or because of some lack of understanding on our part about what the original text means.

We have an example of this with the word “hope” in 1 Timothy 1:1. Read on to get an idea of the kind of translation note I am writing these days for my teammates. 

Make it right, once for all, not eleven times

Pastor Peter and Emil, Arop translators

What I’m getting at here is accuracy in Bible translation. It’s about finding “opportunities for improvement” (as our teammate John Nystrom likes to say), and making suggestions for really getting the translation right. When you’re working with eleven language teams translating the same passages together, it’s really nice when we can work together in such a way as to reduce our workload.

This week I’m checking the Arop translation of 1 Timothy. The Arop translators drafted this several years ago. They revised it in 2009, and now I have the last opportunity to suggest changes to it before it becomes the immediate