The first week of translation seems to have gone well. In fact, the group came to Clif and asked if they could work on Saturday as well.
This is their second week translating; I haven't heard how this week is going thus far.
The outboard engine, which Clif mentioned in his prayer requests, was working fine when they checked it.. that was a very big praise.
The Vanuatu tsunami warning this evening gave me a little bit of a, "mouth dropped open, and 'What! How far away are we?'" feeling... for all of five minutes, until the newscaster announced that it had been canceled already. THAT was a nice thing to hear. I'll still be very interested to hear if they had any outlying ramifications as a result of it.
I think that's about it for now. If I can remember, I will post again after I hear from our friends, who are acting as liaison for us.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Clif is in PNG
Hi,
This is actually me (rox) writing on Clif's blog.
He should, if all went as he had hoped and planned, be on the boat and just about an hour and a half into his 15-17 hour trip to Nubogeta. Please pray for calm seas and a safe trip.
I figured while he is gone, when I remember, I will come and post an occasional blog and update you on what I hear from him (via our friends in PNG).
This is actually me (rox) writing on Clif's blog.
He should, if all went as he had hoped and planned, be on the boat and just about an hour and a half into his 15-17 hour trip to Nubogeta. Please pray for calm seas and a safe trip.
I figured while he is gone, when I remember, I will come and post an occasional blog and update you on what I hear from him (via our friends in PNG).
Sunday, September 20, 2009
On to Papua New Guinea
Tonight I head back to Papua New Guinea for another short stint of translating. I would appreciate your prayers for this trip. I've listed a number of things you can be praying for:
1. We are working on both John and Luke. Pray that we have unity among the men working on this with me. Pray also for God's wisdom as we translate. There are number of very difficult concepts to translate in John. Pray that we can find just the right way to state these.
2. Pray for good health for all involved in the translation.
3. Pray for good weather both for my 15 hour boat ride and for the time in the village. I need lots of sunshine on our solar panels to keep the 12 volt batteries charged that I depend on for powering my computer. Pray that my computer works well.
4. Pray for Roxanne and PJ. Roxanne is looking for a house for us. Pray that something will come up while I am gone.
5. Pray that these two books will have an impact on those working on the translation.
6. I will be attempting to do some checking of other books as well in the evenings. Pray that we can find any problems in these books at this point.
7. I've learned that our outboard motor is having trouble. This could limit who I can get to work from other villages. Pray we can get it going.
That's it for the moment. The plan is to begin translating on Monday September 28 on Luke. We will work 1 week on Luke, then a week on John, then back to Luke and finally a last week on John. We want to see about half of John completed and another 6 chapters of Luke.
1. We are working on both John and Luke. Pray that we have unity among the men working on this with me. Pray also for God's wisdom as we translate. There are number of very difficult concepts to translate in John. Pray that we can find just the right way to state these.
2. Pray for good health for all involved in the translation.
3. Pray for good weather both for my 15 hour boat ride and for the time in the village. I need lots of sunshine on our solar panels to keep the 12 volt batteries charged that I depend on for powering my computer. Pray that my computer works well.
4. Pray for Roxanne and PJ. Roxanne is looking for a house for us. Pray that something will come up while I am gone.
5. Pray that these two books will have an impact on those working on the translation.
6. I will be attempting to do some checking of other books as well in the evenings. Pray that we can find any problems in these books at this point.
7. I've learned that our outboard motor is having trouble. This could limit who I can get to work from other villages. Pray we can get it going.
That's it for the moment. The plan is to begin translating on Monday September 28 on Luke. We will work 1 week on Luke, then a week on John, then back to Luke and finally a last week on John. We want to see about half of John completed and another 6 chapters of Luke.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Crying
One of my favorite verses of the Bible is John 11:35. You are probably wondering why it is a favorite, right. Well, it's easy to memorize because it has just two words: "Jesus wept." Don't laugh too hard. And as a Bible translator, it's a pretty easy verse to translate. In Gumawana it is also just two words: Yeisu itaiya" (I'll let you figure out which word is Jesus and which is "he-cried"). It's one of those verses I translate without thinking too much about it and move on. That is not a good way to translate I have discovered.
Looking at the Greek the verb used here is different from the crying done by Mary and the Jews who had come to mourn with Mary over the loss of her brother Lazarus. What's the difference? There is a big difference and it changes the way you look at the whole story of Lazarus dying and being raised from the dead. When Jesus cried the verb used has the idea of quiet crying, i.e., tears but no sound. Gumawana actually has a verb for indicating crying with real tears, but without any sound. I mention no sound because the verb used in the Greek for Mary and the Jews crying refers to wailing. It would have most likely been quite loud. I have witnessed this kind of thing in the village where we work. Gumawana has a different verb for that as well.
On the Amphletts when someone dies, everyone in the village as well as from the other islands of the Amphletts will come "to cry". They will come to the house and sit underneath it and with the family of the deceased and wail very loudly. This "death wail" can be heard throughout the village. Depending on the deceased it can last for hours. It is the community's way of standing with the family during a very sorrowful time. Also, everyone comes because of the fear of being accused of sorcery. If someone does not wail, others will suspect that person as having done sorcery on the deceased.
From what I have read, the first century was similar to this kind of scenario. It would have been customary for the community to come and wail with the family of the deceased. But in the passage I was translating Jesus knows that he will raise Lazarus from the dead. I highly doubt Jesus was mourning the loss of Lazarus since shortly he will raise him to life. The fact that John describes his crying as a sort of quiet crying indicates that Jesus is crying for another reason. Perhaps the lack of faith he saw in the people who continued to wail as though there was no hope. He greived over their lack of faith. He had told Mary to just believe.
So how do we respond to the circumstances that come our way? I have to ask myself whether I respond like those with no hope or do I see possibilites in Jesus? Tough question, but the answer is even tougher.
From just a little verse with just two words, we learn so much. I need to remember to check things carefully and not assume I know!
Looking at the Greek the verb used here is different from the crying done by Mary and the Jews who had come to mourn with Mary over the loss of her brother Lazarus. What's the difference? There is a big difference and it changes the way you look at the whole story of Lazarus dying and being raised from the dead. When Jesus cried the verb used has the idea of quiet crying, i.e., tears but no sound. Gumawana actually has a verb for indicating crying with real tears, but without any sound. I mention no sound because the verb used in the Greek for Mary and the Jews crying refers to wailing. It would have most likely been quite loud. I have witnessed this kind of thing in the village where we work. Gumawana has a different verb for that as well.
On the Amphletts when someone dies, everyone in the village as well as from the other islands of the Amphletts will come "to cry". They will come to the house and sit underneath it and with the family of the deceased and wail very loudly. This "death wail" can be heard throughout the village. Depending on the deceased it can last for hours. It is the community's way of standing with the family during a very sorrowful time. Also, everyone comes because of the fear of being accused of sorcery. If someone does not wail, others will suspect that person as having done sorcery on the deceased.
From what I have read, the first century was similar to this kind of scenario. It would have been customary for the community to come and wail with the family of the deceased. But in the passage I was translating Jesus knows that he will raise Lazarus from the dead. I highly doubt Jesus was mourning the loss of Lazarus since shortly he will raise him to life. The fact that John describes his crying as a sort of quiet crying indicates that Jesus is crying for another reason. Perhaps the lack of faith he saw in the people who continued to wail as though there was no hope. He greived over their lack of faith. He had told Mary to just believe.
So how do we respond to the circumstances that come our way? I have to ask myself whether I respond like those with no hope or do I see possibilites in Jesus? Tough question, but the answer is even tougher.
From just a little verse with just two words, we learn so much. I need to remember to check things carefully and not assume I know!
Monday, May 25, 2009
Idioms
Gumawana makes use of body part idioms to express many emotions and various actions. Here are a few translated literally into English. See if you can figure out what they might mean.
1) my stomach is bad
2) my liver flew
3) my neck is heavy
4) my head runs
5) my nose soars
6) my head is enclosed
7) my lips clean it
8) my liver hurts
9) my throat writes
10) I ate his breath
Post your responses.
1) my stomach is bad
2) my liver flew
3) my neck is heavy
4) my head runs
5) my nose soars
6) my head is enclosed
7) my lips clean it
8) my liver hurts
9) my throat writes
10) I ate his breath
Post your responses.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Literal or Free
I recently sent an email out to a large number of people. In it I was explaining a bit about our work and what we do when we translate. I was wanting to demonstrate that when translating there is always implied information that the original readers would know but a reader on a small island 2000 years later (like the Amphletts) might not know. The example I gave had to do with Jesus sending two of his disciples to Jerusalem to prepare the passover. They do it and the following verse states that Jesus and the twelve went to the city. One of the men working with me immediately asked, "What happen to the other two who went to Jerusalem? When did they join Jesus and the other ten?" Good question. It's not mentioned in the text. It is assumed the reader would know they must have returned so that the whole group would go together. We added in a short statement that after they did what Jesus had said, they returned. This is the way Gumawana speakers like it. Everyone needs to be accounted for to be a good story.
Someone responded to my email with the question "How are you differentiating what is "literal" translation (nothing added) and what you are adding for clarification sake." People have different ideas of what is literal. What I say is that there is no true literal translation. In fact I would wonder if literal translation is actually an oxymoron. I give as an example a literal translation of Matthew 1:18 from the Greek:
"Of the and Jesus Christ the birth like thus was. Being promised in marriage of mother of him Mary to the Joseph, before or to come together them she was found in stomach having from spirit holy."
How easy was that to read? Would you call that a translation? All translation involves interpretation. If you compare the above with the NASB translation of it you can see some things the translators did to clarify the meaning:
"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit."
Notice that the NASB starts out "when". That word is not even in the Greek. The Greek has "being promised in marriage..." which is a participle. They have interpreted the participle as being temporal in nature and so translate it as "when" to make it clear. They took the Greek idiom "was found in stomach" and clarified as "found to be with child" but they could have made it even clearer by saying either "she was expecting" or really clear "she was pregnant."
Now the reason I said "literal translation" might be considered an oxymoron is this. Here is a definition of "translation" from the program wordweb: "A written communication in a second language having the same meaning as the written communication in a first language." Notice it doesn't say a word by word glossing of one language with another. No, it makes reference to one language having the same meaning. But meaning is conveyed differently from language to language. So if by literal we mean word by word, but the word "translation" has to do with same meaning, we end up with an oxymoron. When we do word by word translating the meaning as in Matthew 1:18 is not going to come through. Another good example of this is Matthew 1:25. The Greek literally says "he [Joseph] did not know her [Mary]." If we translated that into Gumawana according to the words, the meaning is Joseph didn't know whom he married. Is that the intended meaning that Matthew had in mind? No, if we translated the meaning, in Gumawana we have to say, "Joseph didn't sleep with Mary." That conveys the idea that Matthew intended.
So I do put implied information into the Gumawana translation. That is information the readers would derive from the context, information that doesn't need to be stated for various reasons. The author and reader shared a similar language, culture and beliefs so that certain information didn't have to be stated explicitly. But on the Amphletts 2000 years later, that information will not necessarily be understood. Now that doesn't mean we just put in information willy nilly. We start out somewhat on the literal side and ask questions to find out what is clear and not clear. When it isn't clear we find out why. It may be that it will require some implied information to make things understandable. In the example above, I mentioned participles. Gumawana doesn't have participles, so technically a literal translation into Gumawana is impossible for most of the New Testament. But the important thing is not that the Greek uses participles, therefore English or Gumawana should too. The question has to be asked what is the function of the participle? Once that is understood, then we look for grammatical constructions in the target language (Gumawana) that have a similar function. This produces a faithful translation to the meaning.
So the question I would pose is this: Is not the meaning more important than the form?
Someone responded to my email with the question "How are you differentiating what is "literal" translation (nothing added) and what you are adding for clarification sake." People have different ideas of what is literal. What I say is that there is no true literal translation. In fact I would wonder if literal translation is actually an oxymoron. I give as an example a literal translation of Matthew 1:18 from the Greek:
"Of the and Jesus Christ the birth like thus was. Being promised in marriage of mother of him Mary to the Joseph, before or to come together them she was found in stomach having from spirit holy."
How easy was that to read? Would you call that a translation? All translation involves interpretation. If you compare the above with the NASB translation of it you can see some things the translators did to clarify the meaning:
"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit."
Notice that the NASB starts out "when". That word is not even in the Greek. The Greek has "being promised in marriage..." which is a participle. They have interpreted the participle as being temporal in nature and so translate it as "when" to make it clear. They took the Greek idiom "was found in stomach" and clarified as "found to be with child" but they could have made it even clearer by saying either "she was expecting" or really clear "she was pregnant."
Now the reason I said "literal translation" might be considered an oxymoron is this. Here is a definition of "translation" from the program wordweb: "A written communication in a second language having the same meaning as the written communication in a first language." Notice it doesn't say a word by word glossing of one language with another. No, it makes reference to one language having the same meaning. But meaning is conveyed differently from language to language. So if by literal we mean word by word, but the word "translation" has to do with same meaning, we end up with an oxymoron. When we do word by word translating the meaning as in Matthew 1:18 is not going to come through. Another good example of this is Matthew 1:25. The Greek literally says "he [Joseph] did not know her [Mary]." If we translated that into Gumawana according to the words, the meaning is Joseph didn't know whom he married. Is that the intended meaning that Matthew had in mind? No, if we translated the meaning, in Gumawana we have to say, "Joseph didn't sleep with Mary." That conveys the idea that Matthew intended.
So I do put implied information into the Gumawana translation. That is information the readers would derive from the context, information that doesn't need to be stated for various reasons. The author and reader shared a similar language, culture and beliefs so that certain information didn't have to be stated explicitly. But on the Amphletts 2000 years later, that information will not necessarily be understood. Now that doesn't mean we just put in information willy nilly. We start out somewhat on the literal side and ask questions to find out what is clear and not clear. When it isn't clear we find out why. It may be that it will require some implied information to make things understandable. In the example above, I mentioned participles. Gumawana doesn't have participles, so technically a literal translation into Gumawana is impossible for most of the New Testament. But the important thing is not that the Greek uses participles, therefore English or Gumawana should too. The question has to be asked what is the function of the participle? Once that is understood, then we look for grammatical constructions in the target language (Gumawana) that have a similar function. This produces a faithful translation to the meaning.
So the question I would pose is this: Is not the meaning more important than the form?
Monday, April 6, 2009
Postposition in Gumawana
I've been working in the Gumawana language now for about 25 years. I've learned a lot about English by doing so. But I'm also finding that things I at first saw as new and unique about Gumawana I'm taking for granted now. I recently posted an email to our prayer supporters and I mentioned the word "postposition". I hadn't even thought about the fact that people wouldn't know what it was. I did explain it, but I received many emails about it. So I thought I might do a blog on the language a bit.
Some languages are what we call VO meaning that the verb comes before the object, like English. But there are many languages that have the reverse order of OV. Gumawana fits this latter one. So where English would say "John saw Bob," Gumawana says "John Bob saw." I had one person a long time ago ask how a Gumawana person could understand that seeing that it was backwards. Will let that one go for now.
Anyway, there are ramifications for that simple little order. In fact, many languages will follow this pattern with other aspects of the language. I say pattern because what the above really is saying is that in English the important part comes first because the verb is more important than the object. So in Gumawana the most important thing comes last. Universals of language have been proposed that state that if a language is OV it will have what we call postpositions rather than prepositions. A preposition is what we have in English. For example, in English we can say "in the house" or "at night." But in Gumawana the order is "night at" and "the house in". The words "at" and "in" come after the object so are called postpositions since they come after the object.
Gumawana has one very generic postposition goi (pronounced GO-i with i as in machine). What is interesting about Gumawana goi is that it only occurs when the location, time or event marked with goi is considered prominent by the speaker/writer. Usually something more will follow to tell you what it was that happened at that time or place. So if someone said "I went Gumawana goi," he is making the location prominent and there is something important that happened there. But if he says merely "I went Gumawana", what is important is the fact that he went, not the location.
Gumawana adjectives do the same thing. They follow the noun they modify. So English "big house" in Gumawana is vada gagaina "house big-it". The word for "big" has a suffix on it that must agree with the noun for house in number and person.
Languages are fascinating. I hope this helps you to understand a bit more about what goes on in another language.
Some languages are what we call VO meaning that the verb comes before the object, like English. But there are many languages that have the reverse order of OV. Gumawana fits this latter one. So where English would say "John saw Bob," Gumawana says "John Bob saw." I had one person a long time ago ask how a Gumawana person could understand that seeing that it was backwards. Will let that one go for now.
Anyway, there are ramifications for that simple little order. In fact, many languages will follow this pattern with other aspects of the language. I say pattern because what the above really is saying is that in English the important part comes first because the verb is more important than the object. So in Gumawana the most important thing comes last. Universals of language have been proposed that state that if a language is OV it will have what we call postpositions rather than prepositions. A preposition is what we have in English. For example, in English we can say "in the house" or "at night." But in Gumawana the order is "night at" and "the house in". The words "at" and "in" come after the object so are called postpositions since they come after the object.
Gumawana has one very generic postposition goi (pronounced GO-i with i as in machine). What is interesting about Gumawana goi is that it only occurs when the location, time or event marked with goi is considered prominent by the speaker/writer. Usually something more will follow to tell you what it was that happened at that time or place. So if someone said "I went Gumawana goi," he is making the location prominent and there is something important that happened there. But if he says merely "I went Gumawana", what is important is the fact that he went, not the location.
Gumawana adjectives do the same thing. They follow the noun they modify. So English "big house" in Gumawana is vada gagaina "house big-it". The word for "big" has a suffix on it that must agree with the noun for house in number and person.
Languages are fascinating. I hope this helps you to understand a bit more about what goes on in another language.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)