The first Kovol book

As I am pulling so near to the end of my language study time I was told by my CLA consultants that I could have a go at translating some literacy books to start to familiarise myself with the translation process.
I’ve now finished all the paperwork I need to do to complete my language study time and I’m just waiting on a speaking test. The test is scheduled for August 27, which is further away than I hoped for. I asked what to be doing in the meantime so I don’t drive myself and my language helpers crazy just doing practice speaking sessions with them!

I’m not done yet. Until I demonstrate in the coming test that I’ve bumped up one speaking level I’m still officially in full-time language study. In December 2023 I had a test and scored level 8/9, so now I’m just after that last level (and am anxious I’ll stay stuck at level 8!). Translating literacy books is a great new challenge in the Kovol language though. I’m getting extra language practice in, while getting a taste of the translation workflow.

What am I translating?
Soon we’ll be working on the Kovol literacy program where we design booklets to take completely “blind”, meaning illiterate (musom tuhum in Kovol) people to become literate in the Kovol language. Reading requires a lot of practice, so we will also be working on a library of post-literacy books. These are short books that people can read after graduation to improve their reading speed and accuracy. If you think about it the Bible isn’t an easy read. People will need dozens and dozens of less difficult books under their belts before they can confidently read from the Kovol Bible translation.
It is these post-literacy books that I’m having a go at translating. I started with a 2,000-word book called “Peter gets Malaria” set in PNG. The first one I finished though, was a 250-word story about some guys hunting birds and accidentally shooting their friend in the hand with a blow dart.

What’s the process?
Our mission has a well-defined process for Bible translation. These post-literacy books don’t require as thorough a process, but we use parts of the same process. For the post-literacy books, it looks like this:

1. Draft.
   I sit at home with my computer and translate English into Kovol.
2. Check.
   I sit with a Kovol friend and go through sentence by sentence correcting vocabulary and grammar. In the blow dart story, I had to translate blow gun. We don’t have those in Kovol. I went with “hem pu ooguwoo” which translates as “bow that is for blowing”. I was keen to see if that communicated and it worked 🙂
3. Get a recording.
   Having corrected things sentence by sentence I get my voice recorder out and have my helper speak the paragraph we are working on. This can take a few takes as bits are either added or omitted as we go.
4. Replace the draft with a transcription of the audio.
   The draft I’ve written and corrected is written in stilted, white-man’s Kovol. It doesn’t flow and connect as a Kovol speaker would say it. Listening back to the recording I can check on how sentences are connecting, word order variations, how characters are referred to and other things. Working with the helper who gave this version we check it again to make sure everything is still working.
5. Comprehension check.
   Now I take the story to a new helper and read it to them. After reading I ask questions to see what came across. “What is this story about?”. “What is a hem pu ooguwoo (blow gun)?”. “How many people went to shoot the bird?”. The main storyline should be coming across clearly and there shouldn’t be parts that completely confuse.

On Tuesday I got to work on step 2, the checking part, of “Peter gets malaria”. In 4 hours we checked through 6 paragraphs! Slow going! The helper I was working on that with is now away working in his garden. Hence I got to work checking the blow dart story with a different helper. At only 250 words we managed to finish! Today I did the comprehension check. Success. The first Kovol book! Never mind it printed landscape A4… I’ll figure out the formatting!

The translation process is quite a challenge. The blow dart story had a sentence saying “We waited until night and away we went.”. The Kovol version changed to “In the evening the birds slept on their perches, slept and we got the blow gun and went.” I had used the verb “to wait” in my draft, but that was removed and extra information about the birds sleeping on their perches along with a repetition of getting the blow gun was added. The tough question then is: is it a good translation?

It would probably be too large a change for a Bible translation but for a post-literacy story, it seemed OK to me. It adds context and cohesion for the Kovol reader. The reason they are hunting birds at night is because the birds are roosting. That’s an implicit fact in the original story, but the Kovol speaker wanted to make it explicit.
Many times I’ve listened to the paragraph from the voice recorder and wondered where it is on the spectrum of translation to paraphrase. It should flow and sound natural, but it shouldn’t take liberties. It’s tough! I’m glad to be able to have a go with a 250-word story to get a feel for what the challenge is like. I feel like I’m better informed to ask questions of our consultants now. I have a tonne of questions!

Translating and drafting these stories puts what I have learned in discourse analysis to the test. Am I able to join all the sentences together so that it flows? Can I keep the main point the main point? Can I avoid background information confusing people? Can I keep who said what clear? Can I make the story funny where it is supposed to be funny?
My understanding of how quotations work has already been challenged. In the texts I studied for discourse analysis, quotations could be broken into small chunks.

“You” he said “Have done nothing wrong.” He said, “you didn’t hit.” He said… Was an example from a Kovol text I analysed. “He said” was inserted often and sentences weren’t always finished. Mimicking this in my draft of “Peter gets malaria” I found that my helper was joining the smaller quotes into larger ones. I’ve been breaking them up too much. It seems then that is the quotes in the texts I analysed were an idiosyncrasy of that one speaker, or perhaps there was heavy emphasis carried by those quotes. I’ve also come across grammatical forms I didn’t think were possible with desiderative clauses and learned several new words, like “ebe” for a bird’s perch.

You would think that after nearly 3 years of full-time language study I could translate a simple 250-word story pretty well. Turns out I have way, way more to learn!