Another wild trip to PNG

Just returned from another incredible trip to Papua New Guinea. I could do with a little less excitement on these trips, however. I'm getting too old for this!

I left the US on November 7 and had given myself only a day in the provincial capital of Alotau. Unfortunately, my flight from Port Moresby, the national capital, to Alotau was delayed by several hours so that I was left with just a few hours to my things ready once I arrived in Alotau. I had 1 hour on Wednesday the 10th to purchase what I needed, then that evening I packed up everything.

I had hoped to leave Alotau on the MV Kwadima the next morning. But unfortunately, we had to wait several hours for some cargo to be loaded from one of the local stores. We also had 10 extra passengers to help bring the cost down for me. We managed to get off around 3:30 pm.

The boat was almost to East Cape, the eastern tip of the mainland of PNG when we started having trouble with the fuel lines. There seemed to be an air leak in the lines. The problem was compounded when the captain attempted to restart and something was then wrong with the gearbox. After several hours of trying to bleed the lines, a boat, the MV John Vincent towed us to East Cape where another boat, the MV Jazz II agreed to tow us back to Alotau.

When we arrived in Alotau the next morning (Friday) the boat manager was waiting for us (around 5:30 am). I spent the entire day on the boat while they tried to fix it. Late afternoon it looked like everything was ready. We departed again from Alotau 5:30 pm planning to sleep at East Cape (3 to 4 hours away), then leave there around midnight.

We made it to East Cape with no trouble, but didn't leave there until around 3 am. We had several stops to make to drop either cargo or passengers. Each stop took awhile so it was already around 3 pm when we arrived at the second to last stop before heading to Nubogeta. As we were leaving there the engine stopped again - same problem. The crew boy got it going again and we kept going. As we rounded the eastern end of Fergusson the engine again seized up, but this time the crew boy couldn't get it going. It was now 4 pm. We were in a bad place to anchor. If the wind picked up we could end up on the shore which was quite rocky. It was calm at the time which was good. We all worked on the engine until about 10 pm. Another boat passed, the MV Koyatabu coming from Basima (where we were to drop some passengers) and heading to Budoya (where we had just come from) to drop some passengers. The captain of this boat agreed to tow us to better anchorage on his way back and to take the Basima passengers to their village of Basima.

He did not return that night like we had thought. Instead around 10 pm we were pretty well tired of working on the boat and getting no where with it. We did discover why the gear box had been a problem, though. It turns out when the engine stopped, the boat was in gear and the Captain forgot to take it out of gear. So when he tried to start it, it was in gear and that is what caused the gear box noises. So at least that mystery was resolved. There were maybe 12 of us on the boat and so we gathered together with all the lights off to save battery power and prayed over our circumstances. You can't imagine how amazing this time of prayer was. Several people prayed out loud, but each did it in his own language. I would say that was the highlight of this trip. We all asked God to protect us from the pirates who were in the area (we were sitting ducks) and to protect us from the wind pushing us ashore, and finally to provide a way to get everyone where they needed to be. The wind never picked up all night and the anchors seemed to have firmly held.

The next morning another boat came at first light. It was the MV Sagu II. The captain agreed to tow us to safer anchorage and to take us to Nubogeta. After towing us about a mile, we saw in the distance the MV Koyatabu coming. The Sagu II captain told us the the Koyatabu had been stuck at Budoya the night before because the steering cable had snapped. They finally fixed it and the boat was headed our way to pick up the Basima passengers.

The Sagu II captain wanted to try something on Kwadima that might work. He bled all the injectors and the boat started right up. We had already got onto the Sagu II so we departed for Nubogeta. The Koyatabu took the Basima passengers and the Kwadima headed back to Alotau.

The Kwadima was fixed a few days later and seems to not have any more fuel line problems. I made it to the village Sunday afternoon, which left me only the afternoon to get my house set up and to get the translation house ready for work the next morning.

We were working on 2 books, John and 1 Corinthians. The first week was 1 Corinthians with people from Nubogeta. The second week some from Gumawana Island came to work on John.

I started the first week off sick. I had a low grade fever all week along with a sore throat. The weather was incredibly hot. The days in the village were in the low 90s with about 70 % humidity. The inside of the translation house was even hotter. I was already drinking a tremendous amount of water.

At the end of the second week I was finally feeling a bit better. Throughout this time people had been coming daily complaining of headaches and fever. I figured it was malaria so gave everyone malaria treatment. But this was not normal. People don't typically all come down with malaria at the same time. I had given out so much chloroquine, yet people were still sick.

Early Thursday morning of the third week I woke up with a fever. I went down to the translation house around 7:30 am to start work with the men on 1 Corinthians, but after a half hour, told them I couldn't work any more because my fever was increasing. I went home and discovered my fever had gone from 99 to 102. My head was pounding and all my joints and muscles were in pain. I tried various pain relievers I had (even some with codeine) but nothing seemed to help. I had informed our manager in Alotau that I thought I had malaria and had even started the treatment for it so that he was aware that I was sick. But later in the afternoon I began looking through our medical books. This just didn't feel like malaria. I reread about dengue fever. Both Roxanne and I had it 14 years ago. After reading the symptoms again, I began to think that was what I had. It made since that everyone else in the village had probably had it as well. There is no medication for dengue fever. Pain medication is about all one can take. Dengue fever is passed by mosquitoes and appears 4-10 days after being bitten. It can often effect a lot of people all at one time. The person's temperature will go up each day. It ends with a rash. One of our translators, Siyokira, had itching after 2 days. Another kid in the village, I remembered, had thrush in the mouth.

The next morning (Friday) the fever was at about 99. I felt well enough to try working again. We finished 1 Corinthians around 2 pm. I noticed all day I was itching on my arms and legs. So I thought maybe I was already at the end of the sickness. But by 2 pm I could tell I was not feeling too well again and went home. Sure enough the fever had gone back up to over 102. So I thought that it was not over. But then on Saturday again the fever persisted. Around 1 am that night the fever broke. I was drenched in sweat and assumed that I had finally got to the end of it. I had not been eating a lot, but had been attempting to drink more water. The next day, Sunday, the fever was back and it persisted throughout the day. It was still holding at over 102.

The men from Gumawana came and I explained that if they wanted to wait for me to get better maybe in a couple of days we could start work. I was still hoping the end was in sight. But the next morning I could see I was getting weaker each day. I talked to a doctor at Ukarumpa on the radio. She advised me to get out of the village immediately. She suggested I have the helicopter come get me, but I knew the expense would be huge. So I declined and told her that I would let our manager in Alotau know and perhaps the boat could come out and get me.

At noon I talked to our manager. He told me to standby on the radio and he would check with the boat manager to see if that would work. A couple of hours later he called to inform me that the helicopter was sitting at the center. It dropped another translation team in their village that morning and was doing some commercial work in the area for the next couple of days. He could come get me right then. I was feeling so weak and wiped out, I realized I couldn't wait for the boat, nor could I handle 18 hours in to Alotau on the boat, especially if the seas became rough. So I agreed. An hour later the helicopter was there. I could barely walk to it. I had to leave everything out for the men to pack for me.

We arrived in Alotau around 5:30 pm. The manager had arranged for an Australian doctor in Alotau to come see me. He spent about a half hour talking to me and explained to me that I was severely dehydrated and needed to go to the hospital for IVs. My blood pressure was too low, my heart rate was too high. My blood sugar was out of whack, I had sharp pains shooting through my head, along with a few other things that indicated I was badly dehydrated. I told him I would start drinking more water. He explained that I couldn't drink enough water to overcome this one. So I agreed to go to the hospital the next morning. He politely told me, "No, you need to go right now. This can't wait." So I ended up spending the night in the emergency room in the Alotau hospital. I was given two and half IVs. Around 1 am the fever dropped to normal, my mouth was no longer dried out, my blood pressure went back to normal and my heart rate dropped to normal. The blood sugar levels came down as well. The difference was dramatic.

I was discharged the next morning around 5:30 am. As I came out of the hospital, I was feeling so good, it was amazing. But as I got outside all of sudden I felt very, very weak and tired out. I didn't want to call our manager at 5:30 in the morning so figured I would sit on the bench and wait a bit. I looked down and the bandage they put on the IV insertion point had come off and my blood was spurting out all over the place. The nurse who admitted me saw it and ran inside to get something to bandage me up. Even a week later, my forearm has a huge bruise where the IV was.

I think I may have started dehydrating soon after I arrived at Nubogeta. I wasn't used to the extreme heat and it was probably already adversely affecting me right from the start. The dengue fever made it worse. The rash finally did come around Wednesday after I arrived in Alotau. The lower half of my legs had the typical dengue fever rash. It too has cleared up. The good news is that once you have dengue fever, you don't get it again. The bad news is that there are 4 strains of it - this was my second. So the good news is that I can only get it 2 more times. The bad news is that each time a person gets it, it gets worse. Now there is something to look forward to!

After a week of eating and resting and really doing nothing at all, I am finally feeling much better. Thank you for praying for me throughout this. A number of times in the village the men came and prayed over me. I think they recognized that Satan doesn't want this translation completed. As continue to get closer to finishing, it seems more and more obstacles are coming our way. Even still, we were able to finish the first draft of 1 Corinthians.

Grammar

I recently finished writing the third paper on Gumawana grammar. This paper focused on how participants are tracked through a text. Believe it or not I started this paper nearly 20 years ago! Every time I started working on it I would make some progress, but something always seem to come up and I would put it aside for another day. When I returned to it, I would spend a week or so trying to figure out what I was doing when I quit. But it is over for the moment. It will be read by a consultant within our organization who will then get back to me for more editing.

This was the third of three papers I had to write. These help us to understand how they put texts or stories together so that we will do a better job on the translation. So now that these are done, I plan on focusing on translation for the next year. I do plan on eventually working more on the language because writing 3 papers does not cover all aspects of the language. Some areas that I would like to explore some more are 1) use of demonstratives, 2) aspect marking, 3) possessive system and most importantly 4) how they organize information in a non-narrative text. These areas are important for producing a translation that is clear and natural in Gumawana.

On the demonstratives it is interesting how the Gumawana system differs from English. We have basically two: this and that. Gumawana has several. Below are listed the demonstratives in Gumawana.

ame - this (in speaker location)
moe - that (in hearer location)
amo - that (away from both hearer and speaker location)
kive - that (located toward ocean from speaker)
tono - that (located down below speaker location)
mae - that (located above speaker location)

Only the first three are used in written texts normally. Each can take a suffix that indicates person and number but also implies the object is unseen. Another suffix (-ko) indicates that it is an adverb and has the idea of "here" and "there". When someone asks you about a particular object and you point to it you use a prefix go-.

They use the first three demonstratives in stories referring back to thing stated earlier. The task is to discover when they use which one. At the moment I get the impression ame points forward and the other two, amo and moe, point backwards but have a different function. The only way to discover this will be to read through all my Gumawana texts to see each context.

After completing the checking of Matthew, Galatians, and 2 Thessalonians, the next book to translate will be 2 Timothy. I am working on preparing a rough draft to leave with them in November to work on. Most likely we will work together on it next year in April. I also need to begin going through Luke, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy and Philippians to prepare them for checking by a consultant. Luke still needs to be village checked with people who had not worked on it. But since Matthew has been checked, it is likely to go well.

My next trip is in November. I will be working on finishing John and 2 Corinthians.

Trip to PNG

Above: Checking session in Alotau, Papua New Guinea. From l-r: me, Joanna Framptom (from New Zealand), Siyokira, Robat, and Stuart.

I've just completed another trip to PNG. This one was a bit longer than most since I had to go to our main center of Ukarumpa. I spent 4 weeks there to sell a lot of our things, store some and send the rest home. I also had to do some repairs on our house and prepare it to be sold. It's up for sale along with 14 others. Some have been for sale for over a year now. So I don't know if ours will sell any time soon.

The rest of the time was spent in Alotau to have Matthew, Galatians, and 2 Thessalonians checked. The way the checking is done is quite simple. I had translated the three books back into English as literally as possible and still have it make any sense. The consultant then read through them comparing them to the Greek. She looked for things I left out, things that looked too literal from the Greek that might not make sense to a speaker of Gumawana, things that looked more like my theology was coming through and things that were just plain wrong. When we met in Alotau I had 4 men come from Nubogeta to work with us on the check. Three of the men had not worked on the books. The other one, Tomasi, worked on all of them. So he was not allowed to answer the questions. The consultant asked me questions, which I translated into Gumawana. The men then looked at the text and answered the questions. From that we could tell if the translation was clear.

Checking is hard work for all involved believe it or not. It took a week to do Matthew, 2 days to do Galatians and one morning to do 2 Thessalonians. I could tell by the end of the first week the three men were burned out from the intense concentration and having to answer so many questions. We did find a number of places that needed to be fixed. We were grateful to find those now and not after it was published.

The hardest part for me is having to listen to the answers the men gave and remember all that they said so I could translate it for the consultant. Often Siyokira would give an answer that would go for several minutes. Then there were those moments where I forgot that the consultant didn't know Gumawana and tried to give the answer to her in Gumawana!

I was very impressed with how well the translation turned out which was evidenced by the answers they gave. One thing the consultant will do sometimes is ask them to read the text then close the book and try to tell it back. It really is a great way to tell whether the text is put together well. If the person cannot tell it back with good chronology and a number of minor details, most likely the text is poorly constructed. I tested this out with a group of adults one time and it was amazing how accurate people can retell when a text is well structured. When it is not, most details are left out, only a small amount of the main story is remembered or they get most of the details wrong. The reason this works is that as a person tells a story the listener is creating in his mind a mental image of what took place. The better the story is put together the clearer the picture will be in the listener's mind enabling him to easily recall it.

I have also discovered that distractions can make it difficult to recall information as well. A lawn mower going can be enough for someone not to remember the details of what is read. For that reason we had an interesting incident which I relate in our latest newsletter. We were reading in Matthew 20 about the 2 blind men who call out to Jesus. As I was reading Tomasi and Stuart were talking and I knew this would make it hard for the other 2 to concentrate and remember the details. So as I was reading I raised my hand to attempt to signal them to be quiet. As I did this I came to the place where the crowd rebuked the 2 men. At that moment I read with great emphasis "And the crowd said, 'You be quiet!'" As soon as I read that silence fell on the group until the words sunk in and then we all burst out laughing. I couldn't have planned it to happen that way. But it did lighten up the tenseness in the room so that we could proceed with the checking.

One great benefit of checking our translations this way is that these men at the end of the checking know that they can trust it for accuracy. It has a stamp of approval and they experienced the torture of going through the process. They will be good PR back in the village and later when the NT is completed, they will be giving a great testimony to its reliability.

When checking we have learned that when the person gives a wrong answer, it doesn't automatically mean that the text is wrong. We have to usually ask more questions to find out why the person answers the way he did. During this session several times I asked the men where in the text they were seeing the answer to their question. If they can't point to it in the text, I know they were just giving their opinion and their answer was not based on what they read. The answers to most questions are in the text so we encourage them to read and then reread the text to find it.

Some of the questions are very difficult. The purpose often is to make sure the text does not produce some wild ideas. But even for the difficult questions they produced some very good sound answers. These men have learned a tremendous amount about reading a text. And I learned again about how to ask questions properly. If you ask the question wrong, undoubtedly you will get a wrong answer. Same in the checking. Reading fluency really is an art that is achieved only through practice. This is true for the Gumawana speakers as well as English or any other language. To get the most of any text it takes work to really understand what the author intended. This is difficult in a translation because so much of what is in the original is from a culture that is very different from the target language, in this case Gumawana. And it takes a lot of work to constantly look at each clause and see how it is related to its context. This is what these men were having to do for 8 days straight as we went verse by verse through the three books we were translating.

Matthew is much easier to check because it is narrative with some teaching. But Galatians and 2 Thessalonians were much more difficult. There it is not a matter of just retelling a story. Instead they had to draw inferences from what we had written. They had to follow the argument of Galatians which is not always easy.

Now that these books are finished, we have 50% of the NT checked. If we can finish John and 1 Corinthians this year we will have another 25% that is translated and needing to be checked, leaving just 8 books to finish the NT!

Thank you for praying for this work.

Translation or Paraphrase?

I'm sure you've heard people comment about a particular version of the Bible in which they will refer to it as a "paraphrase". When they do, they usually mean this in a negative way.

What do people mean by paraphrase? What is a paraphrase of the Bible as opposed to a translation? Is there a difference? These are good questions. Have you ever thought about them?

Recently on a Bible translation forum for translators this was discussed. And one of the statements by a participant was that people need to be made aware of the difference so there is no confusion on it (I'm paraphrasing :) ).

What version of the Bible would you call a paraphrase and why? What is it about that version that makes you call it a paraphrase? Once you have answered that question, read on.

Here are a couple of definitions to consider:

paraphrase: n. "rewording for the purpose of clarification." v. "Express the same message in different words." Wikopedia states that it "is restatement of a text or passages, using other words." But further on it gives the following example: "'The signal was red' might be paraphrased as 'The train was not allowed to proceed.' When accompanying the original statement, a paraphrase is usually introduced with a verbum dicendi — a declaratory expression to signal the transition to the paraphrase. For example, in 'The signal was red, that is, the train was not allowed to proceed,' the 'that is' signals the paraphrase that follows."

translation: n. "A written communication in a second language having the same meaning as the written communication in a first language." The wikopedia definition of translation is as follows. "Translation is the comprehension of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text, likewise called a 'translation,' that communicates the same message in another language."

Notice that for paraphrase it seems to be implied that we are working within the same language. But translation involves moving meaning from language to another. So the main difference between a paraphrase and translation seems to be the languages involved. From the above definitions it would seem, then, that the Living Bible is not a paraphrase. It is a translation since it is communicating the same meaning from the Greek and Hebrew to English. If the translator of the Living Bible did not make use of the Greek and Hebrew, but merely took, say, the NIV and restated it, that would be a paraphrase. He would still be working with the meaning of the text just in the same language as the original meaning was stated.

As a Bible translator I am producing not a paraphrase, but a translation since I am beginning in the Greek, taking the message, and as accurately as I can putting it into Gumawana. Now the Gumawana, if I translated it back into English, would not look like the NIV, the NASB, or even the Living Bible. My goal is not to match word for word what the Greek said. If I did that, the Gumawana would make no sense and there are times it would be impossible due to grammar and lack of an equivalent word. Instead, the meaning of what is said is put into a form that a Gumawana speaker would understand. This is true of the NIV or any other translation into English. Even the most "literal" of the English translations are not that literal. There has to be some adjustments (even in the KJV) in order for it to make sense to us in English.

Paraphrase is not a negative thing. It is doing something similar as translation only it is within the same language. It is stating the meaning using other words.

Our goal is translating the Bible is threefold: make it clear, accurate, natural.

Clear: We want the reader to be able to read it and understand it. If the translation is too literal it will not be clear. I can show you verses in the NASB that make little sense because they are trying to follow Greek grammar.

Accurate: The translation needs to accurately reflect the meaning of the original (or source text). For that reason our translation must be checked in the village as well as by a consultant.

Natural: This one is just as important as the other two. Here we want the translation to sound like Gumawana speakers. For example, often in the Greek we have to make a statement into a direct quote because that is the way Gumawana speakers would tell it.

So the next time you hear someone saying a particular version of the Bible is a paraphrase, feel free to correct the misunderstanding. Paraphrase is restating the meaning using different words in the same language. Translation is stating the meaning from one language into another language.

Coming trip to Papua New Guinea

I'm holding Liyan here. She seems to have become a good friend over the last couple of years.


Very soon I will be making another trip to Papua New Guinea. This trip will be different in many respects from the previous trips I've made. This time I will spend several weeks at our main center in the highlands of PNG. I will be putting our house there up for sale since it is sitting empty and has been for over a year and a half. So to do that I need to get our things out. Some I will sell off and others I will pack and some will be sent back to the States.

Once that is done I head to Alotau, the provincial capital of the Milne Bay Province. I have planned to have some of the men come from Nubogeta in order to check Matthew, Galatians, and 2 Thessalonians. A consultant will come to do the checking in two weeks.

Some people may not realize the process the translation goes through. Once a book is finished, we check it in the village with people who did not work on it. The goal is to find out if it is clear and understandable. When that is done the book is then translated back into English (and thus it is called a "back-translation" or VE "vernacular to English") so that a consultant can check it against the Greek or Hebrew. A checking session involves having native speakers answer the consultant's questions to check again for clarity. This is our quality control and is quite effective for finding mistakes. We want the translation to be clear, natural, and understandable.

You can be praying for this trip. If you would like to be a part of the Gumawana translation, just click on the "Become a financial partner with the Olsons" on the right side of this blog.

At the moment I am working on 1 Corinthians. I do a first rough translation which I will be able to give to the translators while I'm over in PNG this time. They can go through it and make corrections so that when I return to work on it they will have already worked through it.

I'm also continuing work on a grammar paper dealing with how Gumawana speakers mark participants in a story. I have been working on this paper for some time and would like very much to finish it. I am getting close but as I work on it I find other interesting aspects which I think are important to understand to make a better translation. Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on the pronouns. One huge difference between English and Gumawana is that Gumawana has two sets of pronouns, whereas English has just one. Every verb in Gumawana has the subject attached as a prefix. So where English would say "he said" Gumawana uses one word idigo. The i-means "third person". It could refer to "he, she, or it". The prefixes are not stressed. But there is a second set of pronouns which are not attached to the verb. These are stressed pronouns. The goal is to figure out when it is necessary for them to occur. So to find out I have to read story after story in Gumawana marking every occurrence of the pronouns. I also have to do some reading of grammars from other languages to see what kinds of things pronouns do there. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. I am beginning to make some progress on this area, but still have a ways to go.

So that is where I am at the moment.

Participant referencing

For those who don't like grammar, you might not want to read the rest of this post.

I'm working on attempting to figure out how Gumawana tracks its participants in a story. Participants are both people and things that a speaker has to keep track of while telling a story. What I'm struggling with at the moment is the interesting use of the Gumawana word for "one" which is tayamo [taYAmo]. So far I've discovered that Gumawana does not have a system where they mark nouns as either definite or indefinite. English uses "a" and "the" to mark the majority of nouns as either indefinite or definite. English can leave both off to give the idea of a class of nouns like in the clause "elephants are big". I'm not referring to any particular elephant nor do I have one particular one in mind. I'm just talking about elephants in general.

So without such an overt system, how do Gumawana speakers tell when a noun is definite or indefinite. As I read the stories that have been written by native speakers over the years, I sense that context plays a huge role in determining this. They also mark nouns with possession for example to say "I am going to go fishing for some fish." a Gumawana speaker will say "I fish my fish." By saying "my fish" he is not referring to any particular fish he could point out since he hasn't caught them yet. What he is saying is that the fish are for eating. They accomplish this concept by the use of one of their possessive phrases (they have three!). I am still learning how this all works.

Instead of an overt system of marking definite and indefinite nouns, Gumawana speakers seem to be more interested in the status of the participant. In other words, they mark those participants who are important to the overall story and plot. Those who are minor or trivial are never marked in any way when they are introduced. So in some of the stories I've collected the authors will begin with something like "one boy whose name was Gumasai." What they are saying is "there once was a certain boy whose name was Gumasai." The italicized word translate the word tayamo as it is used here. Again, not all participants are introduced this way, only those who are most important to the story from the author's perspective.

One way they mark a participant as prominent is by means of either the word tayamo "one" when the participant is being introduced. Then they use a suffix on the noun [-ya] to mark those participants who are the center of attention at a particular point in the story once they have been introduced. Only one noun in a clause can be marked with -ya.

This discovery is vital to good translating. So now I must apply it to our translating by looking at each participant in how he/she/it is introduced so that those who are the most important are to be marked with tayamo when they first appear.

The word tayamo is also used with the word for "time". When this phrase is used it seems to mark a break in the story line. It implies that there is a major shift in the story that happened at a particular time. In other words, the events that happened at that time are being marked as prominent.

I still am working to refine my hypothesis. The goal is to be able to predict when it will occur. Not quite there yet. So much to learn still.