Tomasi has passed away

Tomasi Kaitogega was probably my best friend in the village of Nubogeta. We worked together for 30 years on the translation. Tomasi gave his life to this work. He gave up doing a lot of other things to work with me each time I came to Papua New Guinea. He was a very good friend.
I received word from another friend, Benedi, on Dec. 26, 2015 that Tomasi had passed away on Christmas day. In his skype message, Benedi reminded me that Tomasi had told us the week before I left that when I returned to the US, he would die. I thought he was just joking. But he was serious. He had been having mild chest pains. I thought maybe pneumonia, but when I listened to his chest, he was quite clear. He complained of a tooth ache that seemed to be an abscessed tooth. Then the night before I left he had a fever of 105. I thought it might be malaria so treated him for that. The next day he seemed to be a lot better. How he knew he was leaving us, I have no idea. But he is in good hands.

He will be missed both as a friend and a co-translator. I don't think the village people realize who they lost. He had learned so much. When you realize he had never been to school, it's amazing how far he had come.

We know where he is and I will see him again. So we move on to finish what we started back in 1985.

Is our faith just a personal thing?

I'm working on editing the Gumawana version of Revelation and also doing a Bible study on the book at the same time. So I've been getting into a lot of books about Revelation and thinking about it. Just looking at the first few verses the word "testimony" or "testify", which have the same root in the Greek martyr, occur twice. This is where we get our English word "martyr" from. John was to testify or bear witness to what the angel showed him.

In a commentary on Revelation by Brian K. Blount, he states the following about this key word that occurs many times in Revelation:

"In the phrase 'witness of Jesus Christ,' the genitive noun is subjective; when John speaks of the 'witness of,' he means 'the witness proclaimed by.' So the revelation of Jesus as John defines it in this transmission chain is the revelation-the witness-proclaimed by Jesus Christ. In the twenty-first century, martys, the Greek term for 'witness,' means something quite different than it did for John and his hearers and readers. The confusion is contextual. When contemporary interpreters transliterate the Greek letters of martys into their corresponding Roman letters, we see and hear the word martyr. H. Strathmann testifies that for John and his hearers, 'The proper sphere of martyrs is the legal, where it denotes one who can and does speak from personal experience about actions in which he took part and which happened to him, or about persons and relations known to him' (Strathmann, TDNT 4:476). Allison Trites offers corroboration: 'The idea of witness in the Apocalypse is very much a live metaphor and is to be understood in terms of Christians actually bearing witness before Roman courts of law' (72). It is a word of provocative testimony and therefore active engagement, not sacrificial passivity. Martyr language, as John introduces (martyreo, testify, 1:2; martyria, testimony, 1:2, 9; martys, witness, 1:5) and develops it, is language preoccupied not with dying, but declaration."*

*(Brian K. Blount. Revelation: A Commentary (NTL) (New Testament Library) (Kindle Locations 614-621). Kindle Edition.)

As I was thinking about these first few verses of Revelation and what Blount states above, I thought of the people whom I have heard say or write something along the lines of "my religion is personal." The implication being, "I don't talk about this in public," or "It's none of your business what I believe." My question is why is that? Are they embarrassed to testify that Jesus is Lord?  I can't imagine John here in revelation saying something like that or Paul writing such a thing in his letters. The testimony we have is that Jesus is Lord. In its first century context that implied that Caesar was not. Emperor worship was growing throughout the Roman empire. The Christians had to take a stand. It was not a matter of "my faith is personal, so leave me alone." Today we see many Christians in Iraq who can't say such a thing. They are told that they must profess Allah, the Muslim God, is ruler or die. There is no making it a personal matter or hiding it. Each person is either for or against Him. They must testify to Jesus' Lordship and receive death, or deny it and possibly live.

So it seems to be a Western idea that one's religion is something you keep to yourself. This fits the individualistic thinking of Westerners and how they tend to compartmentalize their faith. In other words, their faith is merely a part of their lives. For Paul, John and the rest of the disciples, faith or trust in Jesus was their life. There was no breaking their lives up into parts: political, religious, work, home, etc. I heard a Christian convert from Islam explain that for a Muslim Islam can be displayed as a box. Within the box is the Muslim and his faith. In contrast, the Western Christian's life can be displayed with the same large box, but it represents not Jesus or Christianity, rather it represents his life. Within the larger box of his life is a smaller box that represents his faith. Another box represents his work and another represents his politics. The point being that the Muslim's entire life is subsumed under Islam, but the Westerner's faith is subsumed under his personal life. It's only a part. This means it does not govern his overall life.


Jesus seems to take a very different take on this. He says ""But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Paul uses the phrase "in Christ" to capture the idea that one's life is wrapped up completely in his relationship with Jesus.

We continue to bear witness today that Jesus is Lord. That means our president is not, and neither is any other human on the planet. Our allegiance is to Him alone.

Nearing the end of a translation

We are nearing the end of the NT. It's hard to believe, really. We decided to work on the Amphletts back in 1984. Thirty years have gone by very fast. I still remember the first time I was left on Nubogeta Island by myself. In late 1984, I along with two other men, Doyle Talman and David Lithgow, took the boat MV Kwadima out to Nubogeta. The plan was to get a house started for us. Doyle and David left after a couple of weeks. As the boat began pulling away, I had this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized that I did not really know anyone in this village and that I was stuck on this little tiny island (1/2 square mile in area) out in the middle of nowhere. My next thought was that I must be totally and completely crazy to be doing this. After I had quelled the fear in me, I set to work on trying to learn the language and get our house built. Not long after that, Roxanne joined me and we began in earnest to understand Gumawana. And now, 30 years later, there are just two books left to translate back into English for a later consultant check.

The present status of the Gumawana NT is as follows:
Consultant checked and published:  Mark, Acts, Titus, Philemon, 1-3 John, Jude and Revelation.

Consultant checked: Matthew, Luke, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, 2 Thessalonians, and 2 Timothy.

Translated but not checked: John, Romans, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter.

Because I was unable to make a trip to the village earlier this year, I will not be able to consultant check the three books I had planned on doing. So I have had to revise our plans a bit.

Plans for the completion of the Gumawana NT:
2014: Village check  John, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews.

2015: Consultant check John, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews.
          Village check Romans, 1 Thessalonians, 1, 2 Peter

2016: Consultant checkedRomans, 1 Thessalonians, and 1, 2 Peter.
          Village check 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians

2017: Consultant check 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians.
          Edit Genesis, Exodus, Ruth and Jonah

2018-2019: Editing the NT and typesetting and publish.

2020: Dedication of the NT

Village checking is where I take the translated material and test it out with people who did not work on the translation. This tells me if people are able to understand it or not. Verses that are not easily understood or where they seem to give the wrong meaning are edited to make them clearer. When this process is over, I give a translation consultant what we call a "back-translation."  This is where I translate the Gumawana back into fairly literal English. The consultant will use this for the basis of his checking by comparing it to the Greek or Hebrew. Based on the consultant check we will again make revisions. As you can see we depend on speakers of the language to tell us how well the translation communicates clearly.

Continue to pray for us as we go through all this editing that God will give us the eyes to catch places that are not right.

Tomasi

During my most recent trip to Papua New Guinea, I was very impressed with my friend Tomasi. Most people come to the house to ask for something. It might be medicine, to buy kerosene, soap or tin fish, etc. But Tomasi comes to visit.

I've known Tomasi since 1985. My first encounter with him was not a positive one. As I was walking through the village, I first noticed him sitting at the window of his house just starring at me. He didn't smile at all and it rather unnerved me. I even mentioned it to Roxanne to watch out for him. I had not talked to him before, but this is understandable since I was still learning the language and it is rather difficult to have a conversation when I could only say things like "I'm sitting" or "I'm standing"!

I had started a Bible study on Friday nights in which two men Karitoni and Kerebi would come and we would read passages and attempt to talk about them. One Friday night, Tomasi came in and sat down. He didn't say anything as we discussed passages in Acts. In fact, he came every week after that, but never said a word. He would just sit there unsmiling and listening to what we were talking about. He came across as very unfriendly during these times. I would ask questions, but he never answered one. I was using the Dobu version of Acts that had recently been completed. Dobu is the church language in the area and at the time most people could understand it.

This went on for several weeks until one day Tomasi came to me and asked if I would pray for his garden. I was rather surprised at his request considering that he had yet to ever talk to me. I knew people did  magic in their gardens, so I looked at him and said, "No, I can't do that." He had a surprised look on his face and said to me, "Why not?" So I explained to him, "You all do magic on your gardens. If I go and pray for your garden, then you do magic on it afterwards, you will say it was the magic that did it." He thought about that for a minute, then replied, "No, I'm not going to do magic on it if you pray for it." With that answer, I decided to do it.

We went and prayed the next day over his garden. He had all his yams there ready to be planted. So we prayed over them and asked God to protect his garden and make it grow. Later during harvest, he had a great harvest. He knew it was God who had done it.

The reason he wanted to do this was due to the Bible study. He had been reading about what God did in the book of Acts, so he wanted to see if God really did help people.

Since that time Tomasi has grown quite a bit in his understanding of who God is. Tomasi has never been to school. When we started translating he attended a course for translation and began picking up some English. He wanted an NIV study Bible, which I got him years ago. From that time he began studying on a daily basis. As we translated together, he was continuously learning. Each time we would go to the village, we spent many evenings talking about various passages and about God. Through the translation process, I taught him how to do exegesis and how to ask questions of the text. I even gave him colored pencils to mark up his Bible and look for the main ideas the author was trying to get across.

Now nearly 30 years later, he is still studying and learning. But he is also able to discuss theology. This time in the village, he came in the evenings and on the weekends and we spent hours discussing various issues about God and numerous theological issues that he was interested in. As we were going over changes that needed to made to 1 Corinthians, we were looking at the Greek and he asked if he could borrow my book that had the Greek with English glossing below it. He took that and after a few days came back and wanted to know how to read Greek. So I printed out for him the alphabet and how to pronounce each letter. A week later he had memorized it and was sounding words out. He has a long way to go and huge obstacles to overcome in order to learn the language, but he seems intent on doing it. If next November when I go he has made progress, I will give him a Greek New Testament and a grammar to continue learning.

It was great to sit and talk theology together. I continue to marvel that this man has never been to school, yet he knows more about the Bible than many educated people in the church in America. God has used this man to bring the Scriptures into his language. I once told him, that if he became a pastor he would have an affect on the people in his church. But in translating God's word he would have an impact on not only the people living today, but also for many generations to come.

Update on Gumawana translation program

It's been quite awhile since I updated the blog. My apologies.

Today is August 13th. Thirty years ago Roxanne and I were at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, doing our training with the Summer Institute of Linguistics. It was at this time we became members of Wycliffe Bible Translators. What a journey it has been for us as we have worked towards completing a New Testament in the Gumawana language. God has taught us a great deal over the years not only through our colleagues in Papua New Guinea, but also from the people of the Amphlett Islands where we have spent many years learning from the Gumawana speakers there. We thank all of you who have prayed and supported us financially over those years. You have made it possible for this to happen. Thank you for allowing yourselves to be used of God in this way.

Roxanne and I made another trip to Papua New Guinea in March-April. We were gone about 6 weeks. The time there was quite productive. The plan was to complete 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Peter. We finished all of these and then did a couple of chapters of Hebews which I had prepared last year. I wished I had had the chance to prepare all of it, because we had the time to complete it. But it was still a very productive time.

This now leaves us with just two books left to complete a rough draft of the New Testament in Gumawana. Those books are Hebrews and Romans. As of today I have already gone through and done my own very rough draft to work from of Hebrews and am already well into Romans.

In November, Lord willing, I will be back in Papua New Guinea for another 5 weeks. This time we want to see the completion of a rough draft of the New Testament. It's hard to believe we are this close.

What we have discovered is that by bringing a couple of men from the village to our regional center in the provincial capital of Alotau, we have been able to move forward much quicker. Once the rough draft is finished, however, I will be returning to the village next year to begin doing the checking of the rest of the NT (about half remains). This all has to be checked in the village and then checked by a consultant. We also still have to go back to the early books and make revisions and do a great deal of editing before the NT will be ready for typesetting and publication. So there may be yet another 3-5 years before it is ready for a dedication in the village.

So that is where we are at the moment. Thank you for being part of the team.

Should Christians celebrate Christmas?

It’s 5:30 am and I can’t sleep because of a discussion I had on an internet forum. There was an article explaining the origins of Christmas and the discussion that ensued was focused on whether or not Christians should celebrate it because of its origins.

I wish when I lay in bed and my mind starts writing a paper or an internet blog, I could just record it straight from my brain to the computer. In my mind not more than a half hour ago, it was crystal clear. But now that I’m at the keyboard typing away, the coherent thoughts I had seem to evaporate.

Now before I proceed any further, let me state clearly that I do know that Jesus was most likely not born on December 25. Is there any Christian in America who doesn’t know this? So I am not doing this out of ignorance of history. I also know the background of the original pagan celebration that took place.

Do I think that we should place more emphasis on Jesus’ birth than on the resurrection? No. The resurrection has and should always be the focal point of Christianity. It is the basis for our faith.

Something I did learn from this discussion was that I would never be any good at debating. To debate a person needs to be able think quick at the spur of the moment. I don’t have that ability. Instead after the discussion my mind begins to focus on the issue and I replay what was said by others and what I said. I mull over in my mind what the other person was really saying and what he meant. Then days later ideas start coming to my mind. But a lot of good that does me! It’s never the same to go back and start up the argument again because by that time the other person has moved on. So why don’t I move on? I don’t know the answer to that question. But the discussion seems to follow me around for days. And then things start to make sense to me.

So what do you all think? Should Christians celebrate Christmas and why? At 5 am this morning I woke up thinking about this question. It had been on my mind for several days already. But now the thoughts were clearer and ideas started coming to my mind. At this point I decided I needed to write down what I was thinking in order to get it out. So first let me give as way of introduction some of the points those who were against Christmas made.

A woman, along with a few others, was making the point that God is not pleased with the celebration of Christmas because it was not ordained by Him in the Bible. Only the feasts/celebrations that are actually in the Bible and given by God should be celebrated. This is what could be called an argument of silence. The fact that God did not put it in the Bible means it is not right.

Second, she claimed that because it is a pagan ritual, we should not take part in it. This, I believe, she holds to because she knew the origin of Christmas.

Third, Christmas, according to her, is a man-made religion – human tradition. Based on Colossians 2:8 the argument is that Paul tells us not to be involved with human traditions.

She had arrived at her understanding “through the Holy Spirit from the Word.” I would never claim that the Holy Spirit does not speak to us through the Bible, but when a person uses this type of argument, there is no way to further the discussion because in her mind, it is a done deal. I had a similar discussion with a man from a cult at my door front when he said “The Holy Ghost put a burning in my bosom, therefore it must be true.” I promptly explained that the Holy Spirit had put a burning in my bosom that what he was teaching was false, so now we are in a quandary as to which information from the Spirit was correct. You see it is fine to say that, but I honestly believe God did not require us to shelve our minds when we came to Christ. I like J. P. Moreland’s book “Love the Lord your God with all your mind.”

If Christmas in America today was a celebration of the sun god, I doubt any believer would take part. But as far as I can see it is not about that and never has been in American culture. It started out this way long before America was even founded. But over time it no longer has anything to do with that. Christmas is not evil. It is neutral. Evil happens when greed becomes the basis for the day or the worship of things, whether it be material goods, Christmas trees or Santa Claus. Take for example the recent black Friday sales where greed drives people to do evil things. Or when a store is selling Michael Jordan tennis shoes and people are not interested in the Savior, but only in whether or not they can get a couple of pieces of leather. Retailers are about making money out of Christmas. That does not mean everyone does the same.

As for the Colossians passage mentioned, it is doubtful that Paul was thinking of things like Christmas. If you are interested in a different take on the origins of Christmas observed by Christians see the following article in Biblical Archaeological Review: http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp. In it the author states that the traditional view of Christians borrowing from pagans may not be true. He states:

 “There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.”

The author’s point is that most likely Christians did not adopt the date of December 25 to correspond with pagan solar festivals and that the date was well established before 312 AD.

Furthermore, some of the feasts given in the OT to the Israelites to observe replaced certain pagan festivals such as the agricultural festivals.

After much arguing and discussion back and forth, I realized that it was a game of semantics. The question, to me as a follower of Jesus Christ, should be framed differently. As believers should we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior on Dec. 25? When we leave it as “celebrate Christmas” confusion ensues. What do we mean by Christmas? For this woman, she filled it in with all the content of several hundred years ago, something which most people wouldn’t even have on their minds today. It seemed that when this woman heard “celebrate Christmas” she was really hearing “celebrate a pagan ritual,” but she never did actually define how she understood it. In my posts I tried to narrowly define what I was doing at Christmas, namely, celebrating the fact that God gave His Son Jesus, the Messiah, to save us. But this woman said God judges not the heart, but the actions.  

I did some reading online and came across one site that made the following statement: “Most people assume that it has always been a Christian holiday and that it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus.” According to this article the origin of Christmas goes all the way back to ancient Babylon and it involved the worship of other gods and specifically Nimrod. It became a celebration of the rebirth of the sun god on December 25^th. Winter solstice occurs just a couple of days before this. So from this point on the days start growing longer. The quote from the article is an interesting statement because in America today, I doubt there is anyone who celebrates Christmas as though it were the celebration of the rebirth of the sun god of Babylon. The whole celebration has been changed over the year. Santa Claus is even a relatively new addition.

So I asked this woman several times if God was not pleased if people worshipped Him on Christmas day and praised Him for sending His Son. In her eyes, yes it was wrong because He did not tell us to set aside a day to celebrate the birth of His Son, so her conclusion is that it is a tradition of man and therefore should not be celebrated.

The whole discussion, after much pondering on my part, sounds very similar to Romans 14. And I am convinced now that first century Christianity had a lot of conflicting beliefs between the Jewish and the Gentile believers. But Paul’s point in the passage is to maintain unity. He asks the weak in faith not to condemn or judge the strong and vice a versa with regard to eating or not eating meat or observing or not observing special days. The main point I believe Paul is making is this. As Christians convinced of what you believe accept your brother and do not condemn him because God is your true master and judge. The problem in the Roman church that he is addressing has to do with eating certain foods and observing certain days. The weak in faith have a problem eating meat that has been offered to idols and sold in the market place. In fact, this believer has come to the point of eating only vegetables, a vegan in today’s terminology. The strong in faith do not have any problem with this. It seems that Paul did not want to make it an ethnic issue since he never mentions the weak and strong as either Jew or Gentile. But notice that Paul does not condemn the vegan or the one who is eating meat offered to idols. Instead he tells each side not to condemn or judge the other.

The parallel here, I believe, fits. There are some believers who have a problem with the origin of Christmas and so do not want to celebrate (read observe) it (just like the origin of the meat which had been offered to idols). Paul would say, that is fine, don’t celebrate it, but don’t judge the one who does. The one who celebrates Christmas should likewise not condemn or judge the one who does not. The purpose is for unity within the body of Christ. Whether one celebrates Christmas or not, does not affect one’s salvation. Paul exhorts the strong to accept the weak and not regard him with contempt (Rom 14:3). He exhorts the weak not to judge the strong in the same verse. The most compelling reason Paul gives for backing off from judging is in v. 6 where he writes, 

“He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.” 

So we can ask the question why do we celebrate or not celebrate Christmas. I celebrate it to the Lord to honor Him and worship Him for sending His Son Jesus Christ. On the other hand, this woman is convinced it is not right and she does not observe the day as to the Lord. So each side should respect the view of the other. But the most important verse in Romans 14 is verse 5. Here Paul states 

“One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.”

So I would argue that each of us as believers need to be convinced of what we believe and why with regard to celebrating Christmas. At the same time we must not hold in contempt others with different views or judge them. Why? Because God is our judge. He is the only one who knows what is in the heart of each person.

But it does grieve me when people combine Santa Claus with God or somehow equate Santa with God and somehow get the two confused. Christmas is a time to honor God sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. Just because He does not tell us to do this in the Bible does not make it wrong. Most believers do this throughout the year on a daily basis. But to condemn believers for worshiping God’s Son and thanking God for sending Him on December 25 is not right since it is trying to stop people from worshiping God.

What grieved me most about this discussion is the disunity among believers that it causes and that dishonors God. Every year unbelievers attack Christianity over celebrating it anywhere in public. That is to be expected. But what is happening now is that even among Christians there is argument as to whether or not it is all right to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on that day. And this, I am certain, grieves God and the Holy Spirit. Disagreement is not the problem, condemnation is.

Finally, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas as you worship our Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah!

Sept-Oct trip to PNG

This is an update on my last trip to PNG Sept. 18-Oct 27, 2011. It was a very different trip than most and it shows that difficulties can be a good thing sometimes or more accurately, God can use difficulties to His advantage.

Perhaps "difficulties" is not the right word, because that is more the way I might perceive what happened. It was not really a difficulty, rather a mere change of plans and a slight problem to overcome. Nonetheless, we are to use our circumstances to bring honor to God in every way we can. Easier said than done for people like myself who by default will complain and see the worst case scenario. But I had a couple of people around me who were helpful in seeing things from a different perspective and who could see another way of doing things.

As I head to PNG each time, I always wonder when I will actually arrive in Alotau. The reason for this wondering is that somehow or other flights get changed without notification and delays happen nearly every time I go. This time, the only problem was in Sydney where upon my arrival there was a baggage handlers strike. This meant a slight delay in getting from the international terminal to the domestic. But with the help of a very friendly Aussie, I made the connection. In Cairns I retrieved one of my bags which had been trashed, but the customer service was extremely helpful and gave me a new bag. However, at the time I didn't know one of the wheels was damaged making movement difficult. In the end I made it to Alotau by Wednesday afternoon, where our center manage picked me up.

I was feeling very exhausted and mentioned to our manager as we were getting into the van that if the boat were to leave on Friday instead of the next day, I wouldn't mind. His reply was "Concerning the boat, it probably will not be able to leave until Friday anyway because it still has a problem." That couldn't be good. He also mentioned that a boat, the Sonoma, was leaving Wed. night around 7 pm. Would I like to go then? Two concerns came to my mind immediately. The first was how in all this world was I too get all my stuff ready to go in just 3 hours when I was feeling the jet lag? Second, how would I get back to Alotau when I had flights to catch at the end of the 4 weeks? This latter issue was important because commercial boats are  notoriously hard to get out there and are quite unreliable. So my response was a simple "I don't think so." The manager, however, expected that and had an alternative idea. We went to the wharf to see the captain and met up with Kwadima's (our organization's boat) manager. After a short discussion, the idea was presented of sending a written message via the captain of the Sonoma to ask a couple of men from Nubogeta to get on and come to Alotau. We could work at the center until the Kwadima was operational. So I gave the captain a note asking Siyokira and Tomasi to come in on the boat to work. I also talked to another man on our radio the next day at noon to make sure they understood.

Somehow with all the messages that I sent, it still was misunderstood and only Siyokira came in. Try as we might to get Tomasi in, no boat ever came by enabling him to come in.

Siyokira came in on a Sunday evening. Because there was no room for him to stay at our center, we decided that he would stay in town with a relative by the name of Gilbert. He was around 3 1/2 km away. We tried to begin the next day, but it did not start off well because Siyokira stayed up all night and it was obvious he was sick. Around noon I took him back to Gilbert's house, gave him some antibiotics and told him we would not work the next day. We did complete the first 14 verses of Ephesians that first morning.

On Wed (28th of Sept) we again worked. However I had decided it might be better to attempt to complete John rather than starting another book. So to John we turned. Tomasi had already read chapters 12-21 and made corrections last year when I saw him. The group that worked with me last year for some reason worked very slow on it and we made very little progress. When I got sick at the end we lost an entire week to work on the book.

Siyokira had a copy of John and I used my computer. We read through sentence by sentence making corrections and discussing the more difficult verses at length. Normally we have a blackboard where I write it all out. We didn't have this and had to make use of my either printing out a copy (while the printer worked) or writing out a verse and showing it to him. He made lots of changes for the better.

We had to set John aside on Thursday so I could buy all the supplies I needed for the village. It was a big risk because 1) if I didn't go, I couldn't get my money back on any of it and 2) it would be wasting a great deal of the little time I had. Friday we went back to John and made some good progress on it. We continued to work on it Saturday and then again on Monday. By this time it was obvious that I was not going to the village. So to make the best of it Siyokira and I pushed on and finished John Thursday. It took us 7 days to complete chapters 12-20.

This was encouraging. So we went back to Ephesians. Five days later we had a rough draft of Ephesians. I had not planned on getting any further than this. In fact, I really didn't think we would be able to finish Ephesians. I had also prepared 2 Timothy but had intended to give the people copies to read through until we could work on it together. So I had not brought any books with on for 2 Timothy. I figured we might as well try it and see how far we get. Three days later we had a rough draft of 2 Timothy.

At this point in time Siyokira told me he wanted to go home. I couldn't blame him. He had expected to be in Alotau a week with me. His garden had not been cut yet, he had received word that his father-in-law was sick (in another language area) and his wife had gone to see him so he was concerned about his kids as to who was watching over them. Also, he didn't like where he was living for various reasons. So I told him we would begin looking for a boat. But none were to be had. We got word that one was leaving in a few days and he said he could handle it till then. Not that he had a choice in the matter.


I had prepared Colossians several years ago, but had yet worked with anyone to go through it together. So we now turned to Colossians. I wasn't certain how far we would get since a boat could turn up at any time. We decided to work on it and see what happened. We began Saturday afternoon (Oct 15). We found the first couple of chapters were difficult to the extent that I decided to skip them and go to the second half of the book. Then in the evenings I could work through the first couple of chapters again to refresh my memory and to make sense out of them for Siyokira. This worked out well so that we actually finished the book on Wednesday afternoon (Oct 19). The next morning we didn't work so that I could make 10 copies of the four books we had completed. That afternoon we discovered a boat was leaving night. We got all of Siyokira's things and put him on the boat. God couldn't have timed it better!

In the end not being able to go to the village was actually the best thing that could have happened. I could not have planned things better. We have never worked that quickly and well before. It took 18 days to complete the four books. When I told Tomasi on the radio that we had finished 4 books, he made the comment that we should probably work at the center again to try to finish up the NT. So that is what we plan on doing in March when Roxanne and I will be returning to PNG. We hope to translate 1 and 2 Peter and other book, either 2 Corinthians or Hebrews. Thank you for praying for this trip.

"More than"

In English we use the comparative construction on a regular basis. We can say "I am faster than you" or "You are smarter than you." Not all languages do the comparative forms like English. In Gumawana to say "I am taller than you" they will say yau maanawegu, kom kaakupim 'I am tall, you are short." Or they can say yau maanawegu namliyeta kom 'I am tall afterwards you.'

In the New Testament these kinds of clauses are found in abundance. One particular type of comparative that occurs frequently is "more than". For example in Matthew 6:25 where Jesus says

"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

It's the last part that becomes challenging in Gumawana. Here's how we rendered it in Gumawana:

 Yawoida moe dogoi gagaina namliyeta awoinu be kwama.

life-our that thing big-it afterwards food and clothing

"Our lives are a big thing followed by food and clothing"

For a Gumawana speaker this has the same meaning as the English and the Greek, namely that our lives are more important than food or clothing. Notice also that in the Gumawana it doesn't say "life", rather it has to be "our lives". There is a generic word for "life" but in this type of context he is talking about everyone's life so it has to be possessed. Also, the generic word for "life" can mean "air" and would be confusing here.

In Matthew 18:13 Jesus has told a story about the man with 100 sheep. He tells the crowd that 99 were all right but one was lost. So the man goes and looks for the lost one. Then verse 13:

"If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray."

The Gumawana version looks like this:

Go tutayana sipiyana ibabane, ina sipiyana taagauna

 But when sheep he-finds-it his sheep lost-one

ibabane manuna bei iuyawana gagaina

 he-finds-it about-it will he-rejoice big 

 namliyeta sipiyadi naintinain dedevidi manudi.

afterwards sheep 99 good-ones about-them

"But when he finds the sheep, listen to me, he will rejoice greatly about his lost sheep which he found afterwards about the 99 good sheep."

Note that the word "afterwards" here is not a temporal sequence. The idea is more of prominence in that he rejoices a lot over the finding of the lost sheep whereas he rejoices not as much for the 99.

Another way that Gumawana can convey the same type of information is by using the word "surpass". We used this in 1 Corinthians 15:10 where Paul is talking about how he is the least of the apostles yet by God's grace he has labored more than all the others.

"but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me."

To convey the meaning of the words in bold above we rendered it in Gumawana as follows:

Yau apoisogana gagaina go, guna poisoganayana goi

 I I-labor big and my laboring in

 Yeisu ina vamoleyanayao liliudi akalisavedi.

 Jesus his sent ones all-them I-surpassed-them

"I labored hard and in my laboring I surpassed all of Jesus' sent ones (apostles)."

Languages differ in many ways. Our task is to make the translation fit into the normal patterns of the language we are working with. The way we do this is to listen to native speakers talk about various issues, have the write stories which can then be analyzed and finally to give examples and ask how they would express the idea. The answers seem to come, though, when I least expect them. So in casual conversations, I will often hear someone say something in a way that either I have never heard before or in a way that fits something we had been looking for. Either way with God's help we eventually find the answers.

Xaris in NT times - The Patron-Client system

I'm reading a book by David deSilva entitled "Honor, patronage, kinship and purity." Interesting title is it not? I read this book several years ago, but recently pulled it back out because I was working on 2 Corinthians, specifically in chapters 8 and 9 where Paul is talking about the collection he was making to give to the Jerusalem church. The book actually talks about this same issue because in order to understand the collection and what it meant, it is necessary to understand a bit about the patron-client practice of the first century.

Let me illustrate. Let's say I were to ask you for a loan of say $20,000? Would you give it to me? Probably not. I suspect you might suggest I go to a bank. But in the first century they didn't have banks. But what they did have was a very distinct split between the haves and the have-nots. DeSilva notes that at that time there were limited resources and those who were wealthy tended to be the only ones who had access to those resources. The poor, obviously, did not.

The patron-client system was a system by which those without the resources could get access to them. The patron, or benefactor, would be someone of some status and had access to the resources. A person who found himself in a difficult situation could go to a prospective patron and ask for help. If the patron granted the request, the client would then be indebted to the patron. In fact, in many cases a relationship had just begun. The client repays by bringing honor to the patron through publicly acknowledging what he had done.

The people on the Amphlett Islands, where we work, have a very similar system, though they have no name for it. I recall years ago a man by the name of Kaidiriya came back from a trip to the Trobriand Islands and he had a new sailing canoe. I asked him what he had to pay for a canoe like this. He told me, "Nothing. My friend gave it to me." I was rather surprised at this. I had no idea you could just ask for something like this and a person would just give it for nothing. So I asked why his friend gave it to him for free. His answer was interesting. He simply said, "Because he is my friend." For him that explained it all. For me, I pondered if I had any friends who would give me a new car if I asked for it just because he was my friend? Would you?

What was happening between Kaidiriya and his friend is very much like the patron-client system in the first century. They often referred to such relationships as friendship. This is how Kaidiriya saw it. What I didn't find out till later was that Kaidiriya later gave a valuable stone to his friend. But he was very clear on this that it was not in repayment, rather it was because the man was his friend. To have a relationship with anyone in the village, there is reciprocity.

On the meaning of the Greek word xaris
The Greek word xaris is a very difficult word to translate. In most English translations it is rendered 'grace'. But 'grace' in English doesn't have the same semantic domain or range of meaning that the Greek word has. DeSilva explains that xaris has three basic meanings from which a variety of English words could be used to translate it. First, it can be used to describe an action by the patron which we might translate as 'favor'. It is a gracious act of kindness toward another. Second, it can refer to the gift itself. And finally, it is also used of the response which the client is to give to the patron for the gift. In English we would render it 'gratitude' or 'thankfulness.' So to summarize its use:

1) The gracious act of giving
2) The gift itself
3) The response of gratitude toward the giver

Gumawana has a word that is somewhat similar. For the first one they would say yabobona which as a verb they originally told me meant 'love', but over the years it has become clear to me it means 'to give a gift without expecting anything in return.' As a noun it fits category number 2 above in that it refers to the actual gift given. However the word cannot be used for category number 3. Instead they have to use something like lokagutoki 'thanks'.

In 2 Corinthians 8:1-4 we are told that God had "graced" the Macedonians. In other words, he has given graciously to them enabling them to give graciously. We see all three uses of grace here. God acted in giving (as patron). The gift was enablement to prosper. Their response was an act of service in the form of giving to the collection to be sent to the Jerusalem church.

DeSilva (p. 141) summarizes the implication for us of this idea of 'grace' with these words:

"God has acted generously, and Jesus has granted great and wonderful gifts. These were not earned, but grace is never earned in the ancient world... Once favor has been shown and gifts conferred, however, the result must invariably be that the recipient will show gratitude, will answer grace with grace. The indicative and the imperative of the New Testament are held together by this circle of grace. We must respond generously and fully, for God has given generously and fully."

He then asks the question, "How are Christians directed to respond to the beneficence of God in Christ?" He gives several ways we can respond. First is to thank God for what He has done through His Son Jesus Christ and for what He is doing in our lives.

Second, DeSilva states "It falls to the recipient of favor to testify to the favor and bring honor to the giver." Have you ever thought of proclaiming publicly what God did for you as a way of giving thanks to God? This is what took place in the first century with regard to the patron-client system. The client would proclaim to all what the patron had done. He would honor him in this way. In fact, he looked for ways to bring honor to his patron. In this image God is our patron and we are therefore to bring as much honor to Him as we can.

DeSilva also points out that "Words are not the only medium for increasing God's honor. Jesus directed his followers to pursue a life of good works that would lead those seeing them to 'give honor to your Father who is in heaven' (Mt 5:16)." What we do is also a testimony to God. We don't do these things to earn His favor, rather it is a gracious response to what He has done.

Another response that is typical of patron-client responses is loyalty to the patron. Our loyalty to God can be costly, depending on our circumstances, i.e., when we have to choose between two loyalties, we may suffer for being loyal to our Lord. We know many believers around the world suffer daily because of persecution.

A final response that DeSilva notes is that of "services performed for the patron". Our response to God will include service to Him. He states "IT is here that good works, acts of obedience and the pursuit of virtue are held together inseparably from the reception of God's favor and kindness." He notes that we don't offer our service to gain his favor, rather "they must be offered in grateful response to God."

By understanding the cultural practice of patron-client relationships we can understand better what Paul is saying in the letter to the Corinthians and to us. It expands our understanding of our relationship with God and challenges us to ask some very difficult questions. As clients of this relationship are we showing the gratitude due our patron? Very haunting question.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of DeSilva's book. A very good read.

2 Corinthians

I am working on 2 Corinthians now. It is one of the most difficult books I have translated so far. People often ask me what is the most difficult book to translate. Most think that Revelation is the most difficult. But I always tell them that we found the book to be fairly easy. The reason is that there is a great deal of imagery in the book which no one knows for certain what it means. We were able to translate it literally, but meaningfully in a very short time.

Many translators begin with the gospel of Mark. This is due to Mark being the shortest gospel and not having as much Jewish imagery in it. Gospels tend to be easier to translate because they have many stories or narratives within them. Narrative tends to be easier to translate than the letters of the NT because the latter have a great deal of teaching.

We began with Mark as well but we moved to Old Testament narrative (Genesis and Exodus) because the men in the village kept wanting to translate literally word by word from a local trade language that had the NT completed. This made for awkward Gumawana. Although this slowed us down on the NT translation, I believe it was a good move. It forced the men to begin to think more about their own language and how to state things. Furthermore, it gave them a good understanding of the Law of Moses and the beginning of so many aspects of life. Having these books translated made translating Galatians much easier. They understood what Paul was talking about in that letter because they understood about the Law and its purpose.

So what makes 2 Corinthians so hard or any other book for that matter? Everything! Let me give you some examples of what I go through to get a rough draft that the men in the village can then use to work through.

In 2 Corinthians 1:3 Paul writes "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort." If you know another language, try putting that verse over into it meaningfully. Or at least think about the problems you might encounter.

Here is what I encountered. First the word "blessed" is not found in Gumawana. The Greek word can mean "praise" or "thanksgiving". So right off I have to decide if Paul is thanking God or praising him - two different words in Gumawana as in English.

Second, to say the "God of our Lord Jesus Christ" is rather problematic for Gumawana. If we say it that way, it means that he is the God of Jesus but not us. In Gumawana, if we say "his" it means it belongs to him and him alone. So the question is why does Paul state it that way? Not many helps discuss this - well actually I didn't find any that discussed this question.

Then comes "the Father of mercies." First I have to determine what the phrase means. But the idea of "the Father" is not possible without saying whose father. There is no generic word "father" in Gumawana so that every time it occurs in the New Testament we have to indicate whose father. Mercy is an easy one to do in Gumawana. They have that word and we can put it with 'his father' as an adjective which then means 'he is a merciful father.'

When we come to the phrase "God of all comfort", it becomes a bit of a problem because I have not found a good word for comfort or encourage. We have to say something more like "God closes our livers greatly." Sounds strange to English ears, but the idiom has the idea of boosting a person up. It still needs to be checked.

That is just a small part of what goes into translating. Most of 2 Corinthians is similar. Every verse has multiple problems of not only discovering the meaning Paul intended, but then the more difficult task of making sure the same meaning comes across in Gumawana.

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.

Gumawana Verbs

Gumawana has an interesting verb system. They use numerous prefixes to convey meaning that other languages do through prepositional phrases. As an example, in Gumawana they can do the following with one verb mata 'die'.

1. kimata 'kill by use of hand'. Literally 'cause to die by hand'. This one can be used of someone killing another person with his hands. Or it can refer to turning off something (extended use of 'kill by hand').
2. samata 'kill with water'. Literally 'cause to die with water'. This can be over watering something to the point of killing it. The subject can be rain in that too much will kill certain plants in a garden.
3. kaumata 'kill with stone/force'. Literally 'cause to die by stone/force'. This one most likely originally meant only to kill by stone but is used more often now with the idea of 'force'.
4. kalimata 'kill with pointed instrument'. Literally it is 'cause to die with a pointed instrument.' So if someone spears someone, this is the verb to use to describe that action since a spear is pointed.
5. vamata 'kill with foot'. Literally 'cause to die by foot.' So if I squash a bug on the ground, I can use this verb to describe the action.
   
6. tumata 'kill with the buttocks'. Literally 'cause to die by buttocks'. Sounds funny, does it not? But if a person sits on a small insect or even a puppy and kills it, this is the word you want to use to describe that action.
   
7. kanamata 'kill by lying down.' Literally 'cause to die by lying down.' Another somewhat humorous one considering that we normally don't think of killing someone or something by lying on them. Yet if someone rolls over and kills something this is the way to describe it.
   
8. didmate 'killing by strangling or choking'. Literally 'cause to die by strangulation.' This could be considered a compound verb except that the verb didi is being used to describe the manner in which the killing occurs. It is used of a vine wrapping around another plant and choking it off.
   
9. sapimate 'kill by slapping.' Literally 'cause to die by slapping.' This is really a compound verb since technically sapina can occur by itself. However, in this case it appears to function like the other prefixes in giving the manner in which the killing is accomplished. It is heard often with respect to putting out a fire since the action of slapping is perceived as the means of putting the fire out. I have not heard it used for anything else, though it could.
   
10. kamata 'kill by teeth'. Literally 'cause to die by use of teeth.' This one is typically used with dogs who kill by biting. But it can be used of any animal killing another.
    

Now in the book of Exodus God's commandments are listed. One which we all know is "You shall not kill." The one that is really the only appropriate one to use is number 3 kaumata 'kill with force'. This one is somewhat generic and can be used in most instances. In other words, the prefix kau- has come to be so vague that the word as a whole can mean just 'kill' in most cases.

Another example is the word upa 'break' which can take a variety of prefixes to describe how something is broken. This verb refers to the breaking of something long and thin. That would include things like, rope, twine, string, wire, etc. It does not refer to breaking of glass or clay pots. That is another verb.

1. taopa [ta+upa becomes topa] 'broke'. The prefix ta- here indicates that the action happened on its own. So this would be the generic way of saying 'it broke.' By using this form the speaker is saying that no one is to blame. By using any other form, the speaker is saying the subject intended to break it. In other words, if you want to say that it was an accident, you have to use this form to convey that information.
2. kiupe 'break with hands.' If I break string with my hands, this is the one to use.
3. kauupe 'break with stone/force.' Using extreme force or a rock on a wire or vine would require using this one.
4. vaupe 'break with foot'
5. kaliupe 'break with pointed instrument.'
6. kaupe 'break with teeth'. Very common there. I've seen people cut fishing line with their teeth (also fish cutting a line) and use this term.
   
7. saupe 'break with water.' Again the water is the means by which someone breaks or cuts through something long and thin.

You get the idea. The language has many, many verbs that work this way. So once I figured out the different prefixes, I could create words fairly easily. However, Gumawana speakers tend NOT to want to create new words. In fact, as I have tested them, they tend not to recognize these parts of the word. They view kaumata 'kill by force' as a whole. So if I try to create a word using the various parts I have identified, unless someone in the language has said the word and it is being used, they reject it. They would rather borrow a word than create one.

Yet other language groups in the same province will create words easily and accept them. In fact, it becomes almost a game. Every language is different. It never ceases to amaze me how they function.

So this is just to give you a little glimpse into how people on the Amphletts organize their world.

Trip to Nubogeta update

I went to the village this time hoping to maybe finish six chapters of Luke and half of John. This would result in finishing both books next year. As we began working on Luke the first week, I was convinced if we got done with 3 chapters while I was there we would be doing good. The group of men and women who came were just not talking this time. However, on Wednesday we began working quicker and it seemed they were coming to life. After two weeks of working on the book we had finished chapter 22. So the question was do we wait until next year to do 2 chapters or attempt to work through them in the week that was left. During the day we would be working on John so I asked a couple of the men if they would be willing to work on Saturday and then each night until we finished. They were all for it. Saturday we finished chapter 23 and on Sunday afternoon we finished chapter 24. I was amazed that we were able to get so much completed.

As for John, when the men showed up to work, I noticed there were 5 who had never worked with me before. That was not a good sign. New people tend to not talk and so it looked as though that week was going to be difficult. But God seemed to have brought the right people together. Isileli, who leads that group from Gumawana, had asked Tomasi from Nubogeta to join us. I had also asked Tomasi to come thinking it would be better if he was in the group as well. It was a good decision. As it turns out Tomasi had been studying the book for the last year on his own. He had no thought of joining us when he began reading it. Even before we started work on it Tomasi and I were talking about the difficulties in the book.

What impressed me most with this group from Gumawana was there interaction with each other. I would write on the board how I translated the text over the past year. They would immediately ignore me and begin discussing with each other as to the best way to render it. This kind of discussion is always good because they argue with each other and try various ways to state something. When they all agree, I usually feel we have it right. We made it to around the middle of chapter 8. The half way point in the book is the end of chapter 9. So I feel grateful that we completed as much as we did. I have left copies of both Luke and John for them to edit Luke and to work through the rest of John. Next year I do believe we might be able to complete John.

I enjoyed many conversations with Tomasi over the past month. He continues to grow in his faith. The difference between him and many others is his humility and his desire to continue learning. He has never gone to school, yet he taught himself enough English to read a study Bible. He studies daily and has memorized a great deal of Scripture.

Recently he told me how a woman from our village was at the United Church circuit headquarters at Wadalei (about 25 km south of Nubogeta) to give a sermon. Before going she had come to Tomasi for help. He outlined and explained how she could give a sermon on a particular topic. Later after she had given the sermon, the minister in charge was quite impressed with what she had to say. She never told him that it was Tomasi. God continues to use him to produce a great translation.

Taukidi is one of our translators from Gumawana Island. He came to work on John with us over the past month. I noticed Taukidi would read what was written on the board, but consistently misread what was written. Furthermore, he was having to move up closer to the board to see better. He told me his eyes were getting bad to the point where he could see very little at a distance. I have never seen anyone from the Amphletts have difficulty in seeing things in the distance. I'm guessing the use of lanterns at night is damaging the eyes of most of the people. One morning when I noticed he was having a great deal of trouble reading the board, I took off my glasses and handed them to him. After putting them on he exclaimed, "It's so clear! It's like the way I used to see." So while home I need to find some old pairs of prescription glasses for nearsighted people to take him a pair. If you have glasses you no longer need and would like to donate them to someone on the Amphletts, contact me and I will show you how.

Overall the time in the village went well. I enjoyed seeing everyone again. It is always hard to leave them, because I know next time there may be a few people missing. Death is all too common there. I'm thankful that I stayed healthy the entire time.

Thanks to those who prayed for this trip. It is an important aspect of the task!