My Language

 Tompkin looking the part
as Paramount Chief

One time while we were waiting for the translation team to arrive, I was chatting with Tompkin about the Kope language. Although there are only seven Kope villages, there are differences of language use among them. Deciding which words we use can be difficult, as one village may not accept something that is not the way they say it.

While chatting Tompkin told me that Kope is his language and that he is the final authority on the language. This may seem like a big claim, but as he is Paramount Chief over four of the seven villages, it is a reasonable claim. He used to be Chief over all seven villages, but some conflict that I don’t understand caused the three lower Kope villages to break away and declare their own chief in the last decade.

Knowing that Tompkin speaks for all of upper Kope will hopefully smooth the way in translation, but I am concerned that the old conflicts may mean that lower Kope reacts against his choices of words. While we were finding out more about dialect differences in a lower Kope village, we were told that the Jesus Film had errors. In trying to find out what these were, it seemed that the biggest problem was that the voice of Jesus and the voice of the Narrator were both from Ubuo village (upper Kope). It was not the words used as much as the place the people were from that was the problem.

Being aware of this division means I can work towards overcoming it before it becomes a big issue. Although we do drafting in Ubuo, we have done checking in Bavi (lower Kope). While there I also gave out paper to a number of people and asked them to write their stories for me to put into story books. I want to give the other villages a voice in the literacy materials we produce and show them that their village variation is valued.

 Tompkin and Pastor Elah hard at work translating Luke.

Meanwhile, although Kope is Tompkin’s language, he often reaches for the draft Kope dictionary to check the meaning of a word. All the translators like to refer to it. I am somewhat surprised that these people want to see how outsiders have defined words in their language. Even though we have written it with their help, it has still largely been an outsider task. As we edit this dictionary, I have to remind the team that it is okay for Wouobo people to speak like they are from Wouobo (NW end of tribe) and for Gibi people to sound like they are from Gibi (SE end of tribe). We just need to mark in the dictionary where each word comes from. I am thankful that the English dictionary I have in the village marks British and US spelling of words (colour/color, metre/meter, organise/organize) as well as word preferences (queue vs. line up). This gives me a good precedent to list all the words from all the villages, but to mark them for where they are from.

Kope is Tompkin’s language, but this is not as clear cut as it sounds. Each language has its custodians as well as its differences. It is finding the balance of these that is the challenge.