Village Checking

Another level of checking in Bible translation is village checking, which comes after advisor checking. This is where we take the checked draft to another village, to a group of people who have not been at all involved in the translation process, and see how they receive it. We took our drafts from Ubuo’o village to Bavi village, where we spent two days sitting with a small gathering from the community, going over the work we had done. This not only provides fresh ears to the checking process, but involves a broader section of the tribe in the translation process. Having broad ownership is an important thing.

As usual, our journey to Bavi and back had its moments. The canoe we travelled in was over full, so part of the way there, as we were about to round a corner and enter some slightly choppy water, we pulled over to the river bank and dropped some people off. They waited on the bank until the canoe could take us to our destination and then come back and collect them.

 In the canoe, when only half full (Ikobu)

The checking process we used on arrival is much the same as the advisor checking, as we read the text as a whole, asked comprehension questions and discussed the finer points that were raised. My ongoing frustration is that people have not learnt the art of summarising a story. When I ask for the big picture, I get all the details. I think I may be on a one person mission to teach my region how to summarise when appropriate! I was encouraged by how well the Bavi community got involved and approved of the translation work, but my biggest encouragement was in seeing the team who did the drafting take ownership of the process and reflect a number of the things which I had been teaching them.

One challenge that we often have is what words to use for introduced concepts. Although my Kope is a long way from fluent, I know that when I hear talk of ‘bogobogo made’ (white talk) that this topic has been raised again. This time it was raised concerning the use of ‘boromakai’ for ‘cow’, a term borrowed from the Tok Pisin ‘bulmakau’. They wanted to use ‘boomo’ or ‘pig’ instead. The problem is that Mary and Joseph were good Jewish parents and would never have laid their child in the pig-food-place. If we had a generic term for ‘animal’ in Kope we would use that, but we don’t (as far as I know!), so a cow-food-place it is. Counting and numbers are the other area where people were worried about using English numbers, but as their own counting system is limited, it is hard to use it beyond about three. Our compromise is that we write the number as a figure not a word, and leave the reader to decide how they’ll say it.

 Sitting in a longhouse in Bavi doing checking (H.Schulz)

When these two issues came up, the team who had done the drafting did a great job of explaining to the Bavi checkers why we had made the choices we had made. There was then agreement that these were the right words for the text.

Another challenge is that people want to use all the old words in the Bible, effectively creating the King James Kope version. As they do this to record the ‘pure’ language, I encourage them to write these words down for the dictionary instead, and to write stories using them that we can turn into readers. This way the words are recorded, remembered and used, but the Bible remains a source of clear communication. It was good to see the translation team talking about the need for the Bible to communicate, not just be a place to store old words.

The biggest area in which I could see the growth of the translation team was their graciousness is receiving feedback on their work. In a shame based culture, taking one’s work out for others to comment and critique is a risky affair. That the translation team accepted and appreciated the input of the Bavi folk was wonderful.

Checking

In Bible translation there are many levels of checking, as we take seriously that this is God’s word that we’re dealing with. One of the first levels of checking is the advisor check, when as translation advisor to the Kope translation team, I discuss with them their first draft and iron out any possible mistakes that I have spotted.

The first thing we do with checking is read the text aloud. Hearing the text as a whole allows the team to hear if it sounds natural or awkward, and if it flows well. Although we have done this when drafting, the gap between drafting and checking gives people fresh ears to hear things they no longer hear after working on a text all day. At this stage, some corrections are usually made to ensure naturalness.

Next I ask a range of comprehension questions of the text as a whole. This allows me to determine if they’ve understood the big picture or not. Sometimes these questions are specifically aiming at things I think may not be clear. Other times they are just general questions.

Next we go through the text, verse by verse, addressing specific questions thatI have from my time studying the draft and the back translation. These questions might be a reflection of something I know that was tricky in drafting, of something that does not seem to match the original meaning, or of something that may be unclear. We gradually work through these questions, making changes as we go.

At the end, we re-read the text as a whole, to make sure that it still sounds natural even after the changes have been made. Although this might sound like a dry process, it is actually an enjoyable form of Bible study as we read our way through the text and make sure that everyone is understanding the meaning clearly.

 Arrows are part of life, so people know
how important a sharp arrow is. (H.Schulz)

When we were doing advisor checking for the first time last year, a leader from the community joined us who had not been part of the translation process so far, and who did not attend church often. His comments as we worked on the text, reminded me why we do this work;

“I don’t go to church, but this is truth”

“It’s like sharpening an arrow”

I liked his second comment in particular, as it suggested that the draft was already strong and useful, but that we were making it more useful.

“We will need no introduction, no sermon; we will just read the text.”

I also liked the idea that once the Bible was done and we could use it in church, that the meaning would be clear enough that it should need no further explanation.

Back Translation

After drafting, the next stage in our translation process is back translation. What this means is taking the draft and re-translating it back into a language of wider communication (LWC) so that it can be checked. In our case English is the LWC, so the Kope draft is turned back into English.

As back translation is designed to help reveal if the meaning has remained clear and accurate, the English which is used is not natural. It should sound like Kope-English, not like English-English. This happens because each language specifies things differently, and this needs to be shown in the back translation so that it can be carefully checked.

One example of how these differences show up in back translation is that in Kope we have single, dual, trial and plural pronouns. This means that the back translation needs to specify if the Kope said ‘you-1’, ‘you-2’, ‘you-3’ or ‘you-lots’. If it is just back translated as ‘you’ the checker has no way of knowing how many people were involved.

Another example is that as the grammar of English and Kope are very different, some words that are necessary in English are not necessary in Kope. These are included in the back translation in brackets, to indicate that although the meaning is there, the words are not.

Another factor that makes the English sound un-natural is that all names are written as in the draft, and that idioms are spelled out.

Looking at the example of Luke 1:6 you’ll see these and other things going on:

•          Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. (NRSV)
•          Riiti oroi’ioi mea oobora dubura ka Iehoma hohoida. Iehoma madeire ka Bubuire ai pimabedioido. (Kope draft)
•          They-2  lived (as) a good woman and man to Iehoma’s face. Iehoma word/message and law they-2  took care.  (Kope BT)

Learning to back translate like this is tricky. In our translation team we have one man who mastered the art very quickly and another who finds it hard work, but can get there slowly. It is very easy for the back translators to rely on their memory rather than the text, and it is my job to spot when this has happened. One such example was when in Luke 2:7 that back translation suddenly said that they’d ‘laid him in the manger as there was no room in the inn’. Seeing as ‘manger’ and ‘inn’ do not have equivalent Kope terms, the slip was obvious. Once the back translation was revised, the baby was laid in the ‘cow-food-bowl’ as there was no room for them in the ‘guest house’.

Once the back translation (BT) is complete, I enter it into the computer and study it. I look at the BT, the Greek, the English and the Kope. As my Kope improves, I will be less reliant on the BT, but at this stage it is a very helpful thing to have. Looking at my resources, I check to see if the meaning has remained the same and flag questions for checking. More on that next time…

Drafting

On January 25 this year, we started drafting the Kope New Testament. It was a quiet yet momentous occasion. Since then we have got into more of a rhythm of how we draft, which I will try to lay out for you here.

Reading and reflecting (H.Schulz)

Firstly though, is the admission that my Kope language skills are not good enough to do drafting and that calling myself a ‘translator’ is somewhat misleading. At the same time, the Kope people are experts in their language and are good at drafting. My role is to train, support, equip, resource, mentor, check and advise. They are the translators; I am the advisor and supporter.

In my advisor role, I start the drafting process the night before any drafting happens. I sit and read through the original Greek text, relying on all the helpful resources on my computer to understand it clearly. I then turn to other resources including commentaries and notes from other translators, to help me think through the meaning of the text and what some of our translation challenges may be. In, under, with and through all this I am praying.

The next day the translation team gathers on my veranda to work. Once at least three of the team are there, we are ready to start, but in the meantime we chat about life. With the team assembled we pray for our work, open our Bibles and get started.

Writing and discussing (H.Schulz)

First we read through the portion of text we’ll be working on as a whole, to get the big picture. We read it in several different English translations, usually something easier to read like the Good News, something more literal like the New Jerusalem (my favourite) and something more middle of the road such at the NIV. We also read the Hiri Motu (trade language used in our area) and where possible watch the appropriate portion of the Jesus Film in Kope. After this we talk about what is happening in the text. Who are the main characters? What are the main events? What is the main point? Having this discussion helps to move us from a word by word translation that is stiff and loses meaning, to a translation that flows and captures the meaning of the text.

With the big picture in mind, we then start on verse by verse translation. Initially I encouraged the team to tell the story and then write it down, drawing on their skills as a primarily oral/aural culture, but the team has not taken to that method. Instead, they prefer to each write their version of the verse on individual pieces of paper. Once a few people have come up with an option, these are read out, discussed and the best way of saying something is agreed upon. This is then written on the blackboard for further discussion and refining. During this time of drafting I am often asked questions about the text and the meaning, drawing on my reading the previous night, and researching further as needed. Sometimes a verse takes ten minutes, sometimes more than an hour.

Putting our draft on the blackboard so that
everyone can see and contribute. (H.Schulz)

Verse by verse we chip away until the whole section is on the blackboard. We then read that as a whole and start another edit to make sure that the whole flows as well as each verse. This edit can easily take another hour. Sometimes I find myself frustrated by the time things take, and need to remind myself that I have the privilege of sitting with community and church leaders, discussing God’s word for hours on end.

With the edit done, it is time to write the good copy into the notebook. One of the team members will do the official copy, but often everyone else is writing their own copy as well. Once the good copy is written, it is proof read by another team member before being given to me to type into the computer. I hope to teach some members of the translation team computer skills in the coming months, but so far that has been one of my responsibilities.

This first step of drafting is slow and challenging, but it is exciting to see Luke’s gospel slowly unfolding before us.

Finding Dory

Having found ‘nimo’ in the Kope language, I thought I would see if ‘dori’ was hiding somewhere too.

First I searched through the database on my computer. This is stored in a programme called Flex, or Fieldworks Language Explorer. This is where I enter, gloss and analyse the Kope language. As my collection of texts builds, so does my concordance of words, but Dory was not hiding there.

Next I looked at the dictionary which we have under construction. These words were collected from various literacy workshops my colleague Robbie has run. There are a few of us, scattered across the world, attempting to get the first edition of this dictionary edited and published online, but for me it has been a low priority with everything else that is going on. As I continue learning, recording and translating Kope, I have more and more words that ‘one day’ need to find their way into the dictionary. Dory was not hiding in the dictionary, but maybe one day she will be.

My third place to look was with a friend in our language family, which as the Dory movie is about family, seemed an appropriate move. Language families are those languages which have a common ancestry. The picture below gives a graphic sense of the family English belongs to.

http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196

Our Kiwaian language family is much smaller in both numbers of languages and speakers of those languages, but at least we have relatives. I have heard local Kope speakers say that they can understand Kerewo people if they try really hard, and when in Daru, they understand words, but can’t really talk to people. They also know that their people once migrated from the Daru area. One day I hope to hear and record the traditional story of that migration to better understand who the Kope are and how they got to where they are now.

Small language families are a feature of PNG, a country which is home to more than 10% of the world’s languages. Some of them, like our neighbours in the Ipiko tribe, have no close linguistic family. Add to that the fact Ipiko is only two villages and maybe 500 speakers, and you get a sense of the complexity of our linguistic situation.

The Kiwaian family member I consulted did not know of Dory in Bamu, but said that they had “the same 'lousey us' combo”. Word play is an occupational hazard among linguists. We then got sidetracked into a discussion of where Bamu has a paucal (pronoun meaning ‘few’), Kope uses the same pronoun as a trial* (affix meaning ‘three’). Paucals are rare linguistically, but trials are even rarer. It’s nice to know our family is special, even if we don’t have Dory!

*trials: said like ‘tree-alls’, rather than sounding like a court appearance.

Finding Nimo

Earlier this year I was able to work alongside the sociolinguistic survey team to find out more about the language situation in my corner of Gulf Province. What this means in lay terms is that I was able to travel* about with people good at finding out about how languages are the same or different, and how people perceive their languages, so that we can better plan how to work with the people around me.

One part of language survey is getting wordlists. We would do this by sitting with people in the village, discussing the list and then recording their responses. The survey team would transcribe this using IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet). Before transcription we would always have to explain to people that we were using a special alphabet, otherwise they would correct us for using the wrong spelling for their normal alphabet. Sometimes it was good to also write down their suggestion, as it gave us insight into how they understood their language.

 Collecting word lists in Ipiko with the survey team. (H. Schulz)

How people understand their language is an important part of survey, and in each place we visited we would try to understand this. Sometimes we did this through large group activities, where we got people to write labels for villages and tribes, grouping them together as same or different. Other times we would learn from a small group discussion of how they saw themselves and who they communicated with in the region.

The question ‘Who are you?’ is a philosophers playground, but it was a question we would ask to try and understand how they defined and named their language, clan, tribe and identity. We often collected overlapping or conflicting definitions as different people saw things different ways. Our job was to listen and record this information and to collate it later.

Once our travels and data collection were done, the survey team writes up an extensive report. This report compares the wordlists for mutual intelligibility as well as listing and discussing the social information we found out. It is a report that then informs the practicalities of work decisions as we try to meet the linguistic, translation and literacy needs of the region.

Travelling between language areas as we did our work had its moments. One of these was the confusing word ‘ni’. It occurred in all three linguistic areas we worked in, and in each place it was a pronoun, but in each place a different pronoun. In one area it meant ‘we’, in another it meant ‘you(sg)’ and in a third it meant ‘them’. Apparently it is also a Swedish pronoun!

An amusing thing we uncovered in my language was that there are two meanings of the word ‘nimo’, which is said like ‘Nemo’ from the movie. The first meaning of ‘nimo’ is ‘we’ and the second is ‘lice’. This means that ‘finding nimo’ is either the search for ourselves, or a hunt for lice. Ever since then when I see a mother picking through her child’s hair for lice, I smile and think ‘Finding Nimo!’

 Finding nimo (H. Schulz)

*travel: as readers of my blog would know, travel is a major challenge for me in Gulf Province. This survey trip was done in partnership with the YWAM medical ship. We were based on the ship and each day as the YWAM health care teams went out to villages, we would go with and collect words and information. While they provided glasses, immunisations and health checks, we would sit nearby and collect language data. Well, we couldn’t sit too close by, as babies receiving immunisations tend to yell a lot and we had to be out of earshot for the sake of our recordings! Thanks YWAM for making this trip possible.

Birthday

This week was my ‘US birthday’, meaning that when friends from the US read my birthday as month/day when I have written it day/month, they think I have a birthday in August. This oddity of dates has prompted me to finally write about my birthday in the village many months ago.

Birthdays are not a big deal in the PNG villages I've been in. Although a child’s health book will list their date of birth, most village kids do not know when their birthday is without checking what the book says. Many adults do not know the exact date of their birth at all. This is quite a contrast to Aussie kids who know exactly how old they are and count down the days until their next birthday. I’ve moved on from the countdown, but I still enjoy celebrating birthdays as I see them as an annual reminder to be thankful for the gift of life.

Spending my birthday in the village this year meant that it was a quiet day, and much like any other village day. I had one gift, as I’d pre-arranged for my parents to send a parcel to me with a YWAM friend a few weeks earlier. Even now that I’ve lived out of home as long as I lived at home, it is still fun to have a parcel on my birthday. It was also fun to eat all of the chocolates in the box over the next day or two, rather than carefully rationing them as I usually do with village supplies.

The best gift was not wrapped, but was the enthusiasm of one of the Kope translators for the work we are doing. In conversation I had been emphasising that this is their translation programme, not mine, and that I am there to equip, train and support them in their work, but that they need to take ownership of what we are doing. Well, this message must have sunk in, as in our conversation this translator had clearly taken ownership and was enthusiastic about the next steps of translation and how to engage the community.

No translation happened on my birthday, due to the translation team having other commitments. Instead, I spent the day thinking of the monks of old as I hand-wrote two chapters of the Bible. I’m yet to buy a printer for the village, so hand copying was the only way to get the good copy that I needed. The temptation to stop writing and do some colouring in gave me a cheeky insight into one possibility of how illuminated manuscripts happened: bored monks with some creativity to let loose.

My birthday in the village may have been a quiet affair, but I was (and am) thankful for the gift of another year of life, for the Kope community around me, for the enthusiasm of the translators …and for chocolate.