In the course of trying to compare the style of natural storytelling in Koro Wachi language with what’s in the Bible, we looked at a seasonally appropriate passage:
“That time, angels that accepted strangers in heaven many appeared and they came with the angels.”
Luke 2:13, the Koro Wachi translation draft, as explained in English.
That’s how the Koro Wachi translator explained the current translation of Luke 2:13. I must admit I was somewhat puzzled as I asked about each word of the Koro translation in turn. It wasn’t what I was quite expecting. Suddenly the penny dropped! Of course! Who welcomes strangers but a generous “host”? And this is what the original Koro Wachi translator understood when he read Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared… in his NIV Bible. If these were heavenly hosts then they must be angels welcoming people to heaven. It all makes some kind of sense.
But of course it’s based on a tragic misunderstanding of the NIV English. Had the original translator looked at the Good News version ‘a great army of heaven’s angels’ then they may have done better, but how were they to know what to choose? Since ‘host’ (one welcoming guests) is a familiar concept and ‘heavenly host’ features in not only the NIV but in the KJV, ASV, ESV, RSV, NRSV, NASB (even the NLT!) why would a bilingual translator who considered himself to know English adequately suspect anything could be wrong?
One of my favourite short articles about Bible translation was written 56 years ago by Constance Naish and Gillian Story working among Tlingit people in Alaska. They reflect on how the interpreters for the first missionaries there 100 years ago (mis-)understood the Bible. It’s comic and tragic and repeated in some similar way every day in parts of Nigeria. As we work with people to study their language and the Bible we gradually get to unpick some of the confusions which in our case have often been baked into the reading of the Bible for a few generations, now.
The original article is hard to find, so I’ve re-typed it here.
“The Lord is my shepherd…” and I am His sheep—isn’t this the sense in which we understand this phrase as the result of long familiarity with the Twenty-thrd Psalm? But couldn’t it mean instead, “The Lord is the one who herds sheep for me?” It was in some such sense that a Tlingit interpreter for some of the early missionaries understood it. His interpretation of the opening verses of this Psalm was later translated back again from Tlingit into English like this:
The Lord is my goat hunter; I don’t want Him. He knocks me down on the mountain: He drags me down to the beach…
Abstract: ‘witness’ in the Bible tends to mean telling people about something rather than seeing it. This is not normal English.
The following definitions hopefully explain the senses given by the Greek word martys and martureo, and the word they’re often translated by in English.
μαρτυςnoun 1. one who testifies in legal matters, 2. one who affirms or attests, 3. one who witnesses [tells something] at cost of life
μαρτυρέωverb 1. to confirm or attest someth. on the basis of personal knowledge or belief, bear witness, be a witness. a. to offer testimony b. to confirm bear witness to, declare, confirm, c. to support one’s testimony with total selfgiving, eccl. usage w. regard to martyrdom bear witness, testify, be a witness (unto death), be martyred, 2. to affirm in a supportive manner, testify favorably, speak well (of), approve
(BDAG)
witnessnoun 1. a person who sees an event, 2. evidence, proof verb 1. see (an event) happen, 2. have knowledge of a development from observation or experience.
Sometimes storage space just seems to disappear. I just got to the bottom of some unnecessary wasted space on my Mac which I hadn’t encountered before. Accordance Bible software (very useful) uses the Sparkle service for updates. I discovered over 15GB of old versions of the Accordance app and updaters sitting quietly in an invisible folder on my system. Many seemed to be duplicates.
So, if you have Accordance and you’re wondering what is using up so much space you might want to check:
Inside your user folder
Library
Application Support
Accordance
.Sparkle (this is the invisible folder – open it by using Go to Folder and typing .Sparkle)
Or at the Terminal type
open "~/Library/Application Support/Accordance/.Sparkle"
The Hausa Bible of 1980 is a notable publishing event in the history of Bible translation. The author tells the story of the leading personalities responsible for this translation and recounts the many challenges faced. The author also points out that this landmark achievement should not obscure the fact that the sub-groups under Hausa hegemony have mother tongues that should not be neglected. “No language can substitute for the mother tongue… [In] the case of the 1980 edition of the Hausa Bible, care was supposedly taken to express the message in a way that non-Hausa speakers can readily understand, since for the non-Hausa in Northern Nigeria the Hausa language is his second or even third, if not fourth language. Real Hausa, whether Sokoto, Bauchi or Kano, for most of them is often out of reach.”
“The motorbike fell, and my computer was crushed and it was wonderful,” said a Nigerian friend.
Now there’s nothing unusual in that statement for a Nigerian, but I think most British folk would be surprised. For Brits and Americans, Wonderful is just another way of saying ‘very good’. But in Nigerian English it means something surprising or shocking. And quite likely something wonderful is not going to be very good!
Now, I know this distinction in my head, but can I actually discipline myself to use the word Nigerianly?! That’s another thing. I’m sure I’ve baffled many by describing something merely good as particularly shocking.
Every week I drive past Peculiar International College and a shop titled Peculiar Cuts/Drycleaning. There’s a school bus (above) emblazoned with Peculiar Child. Why do I find this odd?
In Nigeria Peculiar means something/someone special, or precious to someone else. That’s what it used to mean in British English too, as you can see in the King James Version of the Bible where Christians are described as being a peculiar people. But languages don’t stand still, and so today peculiar has changed its meaning, from being a delightful epithet of worth to marking something strange or unusual.
Thus my friend Princeton had been perplexed to read in a novel about a ‘peculiar sight: a cat reading a notice board’. That just doesn’t make sense with the Nigerian (old) English meaning of the word, but does with the modern use.
Just under 2 weeks ago we were shocked by the news of a colleague’s sudden death.
Naboth Musa was only 23 years old, but had been a tremendous answer to prayer for the venerable Duya Bible Translation project. Most recently I had helped get him and his colleagues set up to record several books of the New Testament in Duya language ahead of a month of community testing, and he took to it surprisingly quickly.
Please, #pray for the family, friends, and colleagues of Naboth Musa, a member of the Duya translation team in #Nigeria, who died a few days ago. (In the attached photo he is wearing the checked shirt). He had only recently recorded Matthew, Galatians & Colossians on audio, pic.twitter.com/8qTP1gDKw9
Sorry about the delay. I was about to send this out the week before Christmas but then — along with half of Jos — I got a bad cold that I’ve only just thrown off, which wiped me out. David.
A visit to Ashe land
On a Monday in the middle of December, I (David) travelled about 3 hours out to the Ashe Bible Translation office in a small town called Kurmin Jibrin which is past Kagoro and on the way to Abuja. (Many of our colleagues know it as Banana Junction, because there are always ladies with trays of bananas on their heads waiting to sell them to passing travellers.)
Apart from overseeing some adjustments to doors and locks for our colleague Kathleen, the main thing I went there for was to join her and the translators as they work their way through studying some natural Ashe stories. Patiently and methodically, Kathleen is leading the translators on a journey of discovery about how their language fits together.
Studying Ashe tales
As they start this work, they are using a true story told by Gideon — one of the translators — about an incident that happened about a year ago when a python attacked a flock of sheep near his village. It was recorded originally in the Ashe language, then transcribed using software called SayMore and given a rough translation into English to help outsiders understand the story. Kathleen helped direct them to divide the story up into clauses. Then the translators identified actions/descriptions and participants: who is doing what, and who gets affected by the actions. Then clause by clause the translators took turns to see how all these ingredients fitted together.
Some of the most significant learning moments come when the translators realise they can’t quite explain why a certain word should have been used, but in some ways it makes it ‘sweeter’ that way. These are the expressions that don’t immediately match up with English, but which may be vital for making a story clear and interesting. They help the hearer follow with ease rather than getting hopelessly confused. But these vital expressions and patterns are in grave danger of being overlooked or clumsily abused when translating something from another language, simply because they are just the kind of thing that varies considerably from one language to another.
Once we have learned a little from some Ashe language texts we’ll have a fresh look at Luke’s gospel which we have already translated and checked as thoroughly as we could. While we did our best to check all the right ingredients were there for the translation, I knew that without serious study of how stories are told by Ashe people, we wouldn’t be able to check these ingredients were being mixed together properly. We’ll let you know how things work out.
L-R: Gideon, Kathleen, Moses and Arams huddle round a desk in the Ashe translation office to study an Ashe story
New story books
Talking of story-telling, Julie’s become quite aware that there’s a lack of (interesting) reading materials for Nigerian children, whether in English, Hausa or local languages. And while we’ve got quite a library of books for various ages of children, most of them are somewhat western in their setting. Even if such books are interesting enough, we’d really like to help children (and adults) enjoy learning through reading without the implication that everywhere should become Western or that the only good stories are Western ones. So Julie has had an idea to try to make some nice books of stories which actually come from a recognisable Nigerian setting — like the python and the sheep. We’re hoping we get time to organise that and find some illustrators who can make them engaging and recognisable. I’m hoping that our work on studying the structure of the stories will actually enable us to make more interesting translations of the stories into English. Otherwise translations tend to end up rather stodgy and boring, or else run the risk of distorting the stories and missing the point.
Family news
Just before Christmas Julie’s grandfather Eddie was hospitalised and very seriously ill so much so that we were trying to work out whether Julie should travel back — not easy around Christmas — but in a great answer to many prayers he has against all hope recovered surprisingly well. It’s hard being far from family at such times.
Packages keep coming
Quite a few presents arrived in time for Christmas, from friends, family and churches in the UK, so we felt very loved. Some more have trickled through afterwards too. We enjoyed having several friends staying with us around Christmas, and we even had a Boxing Day cricket match, joined with a bunch of Indian friends. Then just before New Year we were sad to say goodbye to the Mort family who have been staying on our compound for the last 5 months. They’re going back to their village location a long day’s drive away West and we’ll all miss them.
Boxing day dinner with Creighton and Mort families and James MacDonell
Sisters Sarah and Blessing who work in our house sadly lost a relative over Christmas. Blessing is expecting number 2 and has been on bed rest for quite a while — much to her frustration — but Julie’s looking forward to Sarah coming back to work this week after the Christmas break.
Julie restarted home school this week, with Rebekah, Elizabeth and Abigail genuinely champing at the bit for it. Do pray for Julie as she gets everything organised.
Many thanks for your prayers and support as we serve in Nigeria. Love from us all,
David, Julie,
Rebekah, Elizabeth, Abigail & Helen
ps. This newsletter has been delayed so long that I actually went off to Banana Junction again last Monday (8th) for a couple more days of work on the Ashe stories. Possibly next week they will start comparing the Ashe translation of Luke’s gospel to what they’ve discovered about the language of their stories.
