A pastor’s joy over the translated Word…

Malol translators Philip Rokus and Petrus Brere faithfully come to workshops because they want their people to have God’s word in their own language. Picture by Dan Bauman.

While the translators discussed how they would print and distribute their new copies of Luke,  Philip mentioned that Father Zachary Miroi was a respected church leader and a Malol speaker. He would be very happy to hear that the Gospel of Luke was now completed. Father Zachary had previously told Philip to make sure and let him know when Luke would be dedicated and he would do everything he could to clear his schedule and be there. Another Malol translator, Petrus Brere, was beaming with excitement as he heartily agreed: “Oh yes, Father Zachary will be… [Petrus failed to hide a huge smile as he struggled to find the words]… oh, he will be so happy.” Others joined in and shared how they had also met Father Zachary on the road and been encouraged to hear how much he was looking forward to having the translated Word of God in his own Malol language.

When Ben passed through Aitape town in June, he distributed copies of the newly published Gospel of Luke in five different languages to district church leaders from six different denominations. He presented them with the bright yellow booklets and said, “We want you to celebrate with us that this portion of the Bible is now available in these languages where you have local churches. This is not SIL’s book, but it is the Word of God for the Church. It is a tool for you to use in the work that God has given you.” Every church leader responded with enthusiasm and expressed how the Bible was needed for ministry in the local languages. Father Zachary, however, was traveling out of town, so Ben left the copies of Luke with a different church leader.

When passing through Aitape again in October, Ben finally met up with Father Zachary and presented him with his very own copy of Luke in the Malol language. He was thrilled. He related how he was very disappointed to have missed getting it earlier and participating in the dedication. He had been reading someone else’s copy, and he could tell that the translators had done a very careful job of translating it accurately. It was a joy to read the Word of God in his own mother tongue.

And then Father Zachary asked a surprising question: “Could I get a copy of this electronically? I would love to be able to cut-and-paste verses into my sermon notes, or include passages when I print out Bible study materials that I have prepared.” It had only been a few months since the first Malol Scriptures were available on paper. Audio recordings of the Christmas and Easter stories had only just been made weeks before. And already there was a need for an electronic format! They hadn’t been produced yet, but they arranged to meet again the next day with a flash drive in hand. Some things are changing fast in Papua New Guinea. At Father Zachary’s prompting, the Aitape West team realized that they couldn’t wait to convert the newly translated Scriptures for use on computers, the Internet, and on mobile phones.

A laborer of God

Ben and Clement talking after sharing a meal. In Papua New Guinea, relationships are very important. Photo by Dan Bauman.

Clement related this story to Ben, who transcribed it and Jessie Wright translated it.

Clement uses relationships to share about his work in the Bible translation movement…

When I was living in my village and I didn’t know about the work of Bible translation, there were many things in the Bible that I didn’t understand. True, I would regularly go to church, but I didn’t – like the words that the church leaders would read – I would hear them, but as for myself, I didn’t know about some things like Bible backgrounds, or what messages may have missed the point, or what the meaning of the words was like.

When I came and learned how to do the work of Bible translation, I learned many things. Before I didn’t know about them.  For example, the Tok Pisin Bible too, it doesn’t explain it well, or many things remain hidden.  So when I came to do Bible translation, I did much research, so it was like, okay, many things helped me and I understood. Now I understood about God.

When I would go back to my village, I would tell my family,

“God is the source of all things, and when we ourselves see things clearly with the Bible, we need to sit down patiently and read the Bible carefully, and we will understand now how God works in our lives.”

It’s like this: when I went to work with the others in the work of Bible translation, I understood many things. God worked. And I learned many things where the Tok Pisin Bible doesn’t follow the original Greek. The Greek language was the first language – and Hebrew – that they translated into Latin, and later into English, and later they translated it into the Tok Pisin language. And then we come up to the time now where we are translating it into our own specific language so that we can understand the meaning of the words.

So as far as I myself am concerned, I have now come to know many good things that I learned. After I learned these things and then I was back in my village, many men would come up and say to me,

“Come, let’s go do this other work, so forget about it, and leave this work of SIL.”

But I would tell them,

“No, I’m not concerned with whatever other work, I am doing the work of God. I have become” – I would use a certain kind of talk that I like to say – “I have become a laborer of God.”

I don’t want to labor for another man. I want to labor for God, and it’s like this: I live at my village, the work of God is what I do, so he helps me. If I feel there is a thing that I find difficult, then the Word of God helps me, and now I see that I have learned many good things. I am happy about this.

Jesus is born among the Sissano people…

Felix from Wolwale took his turn recording the book of Luke in his own language. Photo by Dan Bauman.

Sissano Translator Kenny Aiprum related the following story to Ben who transcribed it, and then it was translated by our teammate Jessie Wright:

When Kenny first took the booklets of Luke and the Christmas Story back to the three Sissano villages, the response was so enthusiastic in the first village that he managed to keep aside only a few copies to distribute to the other villages.

He made sure to reserve a copy for the Catholic catechist, since that is the majority church in the Sissano area. The catechist wanted to read it over and over and be able to read it with understanding so that he could stand up in the Sunday service and read it well in their own language. But many women came and reported afterwards that when he read it, he made quite a few mistakes since this was the first time he had read something publicly in their own language.

Kenny went back and reported to his advisors in the Aitape West Translation Project that the church leaders were requesting that if a recording could also be made of the Christmas Story on CD, then they could listen to it over and over again.

They could listen along with the recording as they read it on paper and learn to read it much better.

In October, that request was fulfilled as cassettes and CDs were made available.

Others came back after the Christmas services and told Kenny with much joy that they got to hear the story of Jesus’ birth read in their own language.

They reported that when they heard it read, it really pierced their hearts and stimulated their thinking because they heard these words in their own language.

For too many years they had not heard this story told in their own Sissano language.

Evidently, the catechist had listened to the CD and really prepared well before Christmas day.

Kenny says,

“When he read it at Christmas, he knew it completely. The first time when I had given it to them, they were still trying to learn it. But when the catechist read it at Christmas, he knew it well and read it just fine.”

All the people were also really interested in listening. They were surprised, and they said,

“Hey! This man didn’t know before how to read Sissano words quickly and clearly like that.”

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…

New songs about a new road at Koi Nili, “the place where they sing.”

The concluding part 8 in the continuing short history of the Goiniri Onnele people of Papua New Guinea as reported to me last week by Dominic Pusai…

Now that the road is going in up there to Koi Nili, the Goiniri could move back to their roots within the next few years. At the same time the Goiniri, Wolwale, and Romei-Barera Bible translators are starting to think about taking the Bible translation movement into the mountains. There are many other Onnele language groups that still live in remote areas and have no access to the Word of God in their own languages.

These translators became a part of the Aitape West Translation Project in 2001 after a tsunami forced the Arop people to relocate further inland and the Arop translation team found themselves centrally located between 10 other language groups in the region. They were asking for Bible translation, and they couldn’t be denied. If the Goiniri people move back to Old Goiniri, or Koi Nili – “the place where they sing” — this could be another central area where the Bible translation movement could clearly mark out a new road for many other groups in the Onnele family of languages.

And once again they’ll hear others singing at Koi Nili. But these will be new songs about a new road from the Word of God, and in their own languages.