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?

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.

Checking translations

I recently found a website for a church where the pastor had a blog. He raised some questions about the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He was questioning how translators could really know that the translation was correct in the language. I was surprised by the statements he made because if he had done even a small amount of research he could have found very good answers to his questions. Right now I'm in the midst of checking some chapters of Joshua for a colleague in Papua New Guinea. So I thought this would be a good time to talk about Wycliffe's "quality control".

Believe it or not, before any Scripture is published it has to be checked. We don't just do a minor little read through either. Normally, when any book is completed in a first draft form, the translators will then check with native speakers who have not worked on it. When I do this in the village, I round up some men and women who did not work on the translation. We then begin reading the book paragraph by paragraph. I have them read a little then I ask them to close their books and tell me what they remember. This tells me if the text is coherent. If they can remember things in the right order and can recall minor details, there is a good chance it is well written. If, on the other hand, they are unable to come up with details and seem to be confused on the order of events, there is most likely something that is not translated quite right.

I will ask questions about each verse as to who is doing what, when, where, and why. The answers that come back are very helpful and we make changes based on what is not understood properly. I ask questions about words that we have used to make sure they mean what the translators told me they did.

Once that phase is done, I translate the whole thing back into English. As I do I am constantly checking it again to see if we left something out.

When I have translated back into English this copy is given to a translation consultant. He will check this against the Greek or Hebrew. His goal is make sure we didn't leave something out. If he finds things that may be questionable exegetically or theologically, he may challenge me on it. He goes through it very carefully writing out questions. Then we meet together with a native speaker of the language. He will ask the questions and I will translate them into Gumawana. The native speaker will be someone who has not worked on this book in any way before this point. His answers will usually show whether or not it is clear. By having another set of eyes look over the text, we are able to find any problem areas.

Only after all this checking is done, can we publish. I am a translation consultant as well and it is possible to read through the English back-translation and find errors. The questioning time does work to find most if not all problems. In fact, I would say that our translations are tested far more than any English translation is. Furthermore, we don't use the same consultant for all the books we translate. For Gumawana we have already had 6 different consultants check it. And in checking the gospels, we really get it checked four times. Even though Mark may be done, when a different consultant checks Matthew he may find things that were missed on Mark. So changes are made to both. As far as I can see it is one of the best systems for quality control.

Responding to this pastor's query about being able to understand what the native speaker knows about the translation, I can say that the majority of translators in Wycliffe have learned the language they are working in very, very well so that they can understand how the native speakers are going to take a certain passage. When we are translating we do so in Gumawana. We do rarely use English. So when I am looking for an important term in the language, I explain it all in Gumawana. After 25 years working in the language, my fluency is quite high as is the case for most translators.

Hopefully, this will clear up questions you might have about how we maintain quality control.

Hunger on the Amphletts

I just received an email a few days ago from our regional manager at our regional center in Alotau (Milne Bay Province, PNG). He stated he heard our friend Tomasi on the radio (he added the word "clearly" because our new antenna must really be working!). I guess they are experiencing another famine of sorts. We were out there last Oct for several weeks and there had been so much rain that the people could not plant their yams. I don't know the full story yet but I do know that when the gardens get messed up, a famine follows.

Normally on the Amphlett people plant their gardens in August or September. Harvest is in May. The yams usually last from harvest time till December. Then they begin eating more sweet potatoes, bananas and manioc from January till the next harvest. This past year the Southeast winds which usually blow from May till around September kept right on blowing and producing so much rain the ground stayed to moist to plant. If they had planted the seed yams would have rotted in ground.

So it is possible with all the rain from last year they are hurting for food. When this happens they begin sailing to other language groups to trade their clay pots for food. They will also trade turtle, fish and betel nut as well.

We had planned a possible trip in March and now we are glad we didn't. The other message from Tomasi was that the seas were so rough, he advised not trying to come. I appreciate him thinking of my stomach. It reminds me of a trip we took in July one time from the village Nubogeta to Alotau. It's about 15 hours. I couldn't even pick my head up off the bench because it was so rough. July is the worst time to travel. The Southeast winds are at their worst at that time. 15 hours of the boat slamming into the waves - up and down, up and down.

There was one other time I tried going in on the boat and it was rough. The Southeast winds had started blowing and I could hear the howl all day. I thought maybe that night it would calm down. Around midnight I thought it had calmed down and planned on leaving. We boarded the boat. It was one of those nights where it is so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face. As we pulled out of the reef area, we hit the first waves. Because I couldn't see the horizon I knew I was in for trouble. For the next 5 hours straight I was throwing up. I would open the window, throw up, then close it quickly so the waves didn't come crashing in. Once we were in the shelter of three islands, it was calm and I had a brief rest. But then we turned Southeast again and once I again I threw up for another 5 hours. Once we were in Milne Bay, the waves finally calmed down and I was very happy!

So you can see why I would be glad not to be on a boat at the moment. If Tomasi says it's rough, I believe him. He knows all about my weak stomach.

So I would appreciate you praying for the people on the Amphletts. You may never meet them, but they are going to have a tough time with a lack of food. Pray that God will provide the means for them to find the food they need in the ocean and in their trading relations.

Living in Papua New Guinea has been exciting at times. There have been times when I wish I had been some place else though. It's nice to talk about what happened in the past, but when the events happened I would rather have been anywhere else at the time. Medical work is one area I have never enjoyed. We were only trained to do minor things. So when major things happen, it pushed us to the limit some times.

One time we were getting ready for bed when the kids playing nearby brought an injured kid whose name was Edwin. They had been playing a game with old tin cans. The game was rather interesting. Some of the kids attempted to pile the tins up while a couple of them tried to knock them down with a make shift ball. Unfortunately for Edwin when he grabbed a can another kid grabbed the same one. They both pulled hard. The other kid let go and Edwin found the tin smacked against his forehead. He had a nice gash just above his left eye. Blood and guts everywhere. I might be exagerating a bit, but you get the idea. Those cuts on the face always seem to bleed excessively.

So now we have a problem. The thing obviously needed to be stitched. But how? Roxanne hates needles, so that's out. We had been taught to give injections in the backside, but not to sew up people. I pulled out my trusty book "Where there is no doctor" to find out. Actually, I like to refer to the book as "Where you wish you had a doctor." I checked the book to find out which local I should use and how to give the injections so I can attempt to sew it (which I also don't know how to do). The book lived up to the name I gave it because I couldn't find anything that explained it well. What to do? I prayed a lot now hoping for some divine wisdom. I chose one of the two possible locals that could be used (I figured I had a 50% chance of getting it right). I prayed over Edwin before I started on him. At this point you might say I was in an operating theater. The entire village was on our verandah to watch the dimdim (that's what the call foreigners there) fix this kid. My prayer for him was that he wouldn't feel anything. You see, I knew what was coming. I've experienced the other end of that needle and know it hurts like the dickens. That and the fact that I had never sewn up someone before would guarantee this kid was in for it.

Edwin lay there quietly with his eyes closed as I attempted to put the needle in. All eyes were on me. The problem was the blasted needle wouldn't go through his skin. I pushed and prodded with no luck. I sat back to think what to do. Someone said bogina ikamasa 'he has died'. I looked down and he did look like he was dead. At that point I realized that while I had been trying to stick him with the needle he never made a sound nor did he ever move. I asked, "Edwin, are you all right?" He opened his eyes a little and said, U 'Yes'. "Does it hurt", I asked. He said, Tupwana 'A little."

By this time my hands are starting to shake. I tried once again to put the needle through his skin. I thought I got it through so pushed on the syringe. The local ran down his face into his eye. I thought great, now I'm going to blind him for life. The gash will hurt but his eye won't feel a thing! I wiped his face off and once again sat back. I asked Roxanne to do it. She told me she couldn't do that, no way. I explained to her that there was no other way. I couldn't do it now. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. She finally relented and tried it once. No go.

We had put this kid through quite a bit. I figured it would be healed by the time we got the local in him! So I made an excutive decision. I said, "Let's wipe his face off and just put a butterfly on it." That's what we did. I sprinkled a little antibiotic powder on it, cut out a cute little butterfly and plastered to his forehead. We told Edwin to leave it on there till it drops off on its own. That really is not that long there. I think the crowd quite enjoyed this little aside from the everyday life.

What had I done wrong? Well, for starters I found out later the injection is given inside the wound not on the outside as I had been doing. Made complete sense why I couldn't get the needle through his skin.

A week or so later we saw Edwin. I called him over to look at his forward. You won't believe it. There was not a mark on his forehead, no scare, no line, nothing. Completely healed.

And God must have been looking down and chuckling. I can laugh now, but I sure wasn't when it happened. Stay tuned for more stories from the village.

The Truth Project

I'm going through thevideo series "The Truth Project" from focus on the family at a church in San Marcos. It is an excellent series and very much worth watching. It helps to understand the current culture and the false assumptions people are living by.

The one today on history was great. Too many people today do not understand the importance of history. There are people trying to rewrite it in an attempt to remove God from the picture. The point was if people can change the past (i.e., rewrite history) they can change the way people think today. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans are being deceived by the rewriting of history.

I'm continuing to translate Matthew's gospel back into English (see my previous posting on what a backtranslation is). I came to Matthew 6 where at the beginning where Jesus in the middle of the sermon on the mount makes reference to the hypocrites in the synagogues. Gumawana does not have a word for hypocrite. At first we translated it as topola 'one-who-lies' or 'liar'. But as I was rereading it, I found that it just didn't sound right. Was Jesus saying they were liars? Lie is more of a verbal idea, but in Matthew 6 Jesus is referring to people who act one way to impress but the heart is not right.

So as always, I had to go back and rethink how we had translated this word every time it occurred in Matthew (as well as Luke and John!). Some believe that the word hypocrite does not have a Greek background which is where our English word comes from. Rather, it is believed to have a Hebrew background. The word in the Old Testament seems to refer to a godless person. It is suggested that 'lawless', 'corrupt' or 'unrighteousness person' are better translations of the word. There is a mismatch between the outward appearance and what is in the heart.

So Gumawana topola 'liar' will not work. Instead we can say todedevina polapola 'one-who-is-good false' which will mean something like 'a false good person.' The idea that hopefully comes across is that this would refer to a person who acts as a good person towards others but inside he is not; he is godless.

So the editing continues. I keep learning new things everytime I work on the translation. It's amazing how when you look at things through another language it requires you to think outside the box.