Work in Progress

A Rowbory family blog from Nigeria

Coding/Translating: Best Practice can slow you down

I enjoy reading about software development (and rocketry) and often find something that makes me think a little more about Bible Translation and how we do it. The last few years several of us have been thinking seriously about the quality and processes of what we work on, developing and thinking through implementing ‘Best Practices’ …

Coding/Translating: Taking a fulfilling demotion

Before I had a thought of doing Bible Translation my first hobby and possible career choice was in Software Engineering.* I got diverted from that after graduation, but I like to keep abreast of what people are doing and learning in the programming and development world, and so I came upon an interesting article about …

The Rowbory family on Christmas Day 2021

Happy Christmas, Happy New Year

We’re still working on a long-overdue letter of news, thanks to God and requests for prayer, but in the meantime we wanted to send warm greetings from Jos. It’s a little cool now, but we’re enjoying some al fresco meals together, and enjoyed gathering at church. Being a city church it seems quite a few …

Meat? People of hair?

The Greek word σαρξ (sarx) gets a variety of translations. Sometimes it means meat or flesh. In Luke chapter 3 verse 6 the message from Isaiah (40:5) is a promise that after the way is cleared, all σαρξ will see the God’s salvation. The Hebrew word was בָּשָׂר֙ ‘basar’, which has a similar (but not …

Assembling Solar Panels

Together with my friend Gideon Ishaya I’ve been finally completing a project I had in mind for many years: fabricating solar panels using local components. We’ve tested the prototype panel for a few days and despite having many broken panels and the weather being cloudy, it seems to generate at least 15W but possibly more. …

May/June/July: Literacy, Translation, Holidays!

Here’s our latest newsletter, looking back at May and June and ahead to July. Do get in touch if you’d like to hear specific things next time.

Tadpoles

This is one of our girls’ favourite times of year in Nigeria – when streams run down and pool a bit with just the right kind of environment for tadpoles. This year Rebekah appears to be naming hers, and there seems something of a K-Pop theme. I guess tadpoles read backwards, which would be why …

New tune: Lord, I have made your word my choice

I spotted another classic hymn (557 in Praise!) and decided another new tune was in order. This time I had an assistant to sing with me:

You will know that I am the LORD

Reading Ezekiel with my daughter Rebekah is very interesting. The other day we had a chapter (2) that reminded her of Taffy Tegumai in Rudyard Kipling’s Just so stories. (“For they are a rebellious people.”) All the way through it’s been mildly disconcerting to have Ezekiel addressed as “Son of Man” if you’re used to …

How do we write this? Grammaticalisation causing trouble

There are many conundrums in writing the Ishɛ language that I’ve been aware of for some years. One is how to write a verb that pops up in natural speech sounding like ‘aguna‘, or ‘ugunu‘ or ‘egune‘, often explained as meaning ‘again’. (In the negative the construction doesn’t mean ‘again’ so much as ‘no longer’ …