A coworker returns

It’s been an exciting week for us. We’ve been without coworkers in Kovol since July and we are delighted that the Hansen family have returned to join us! Philip has joined us but Natalie and the kids are staying in Goroka for now. We need to wait an extra week to see Natalie and the new twins, and for Oscar to have his playmates back.
The Hansen family had an extension built on their house recently. A build team flew in to wall in part of the veranda to turn it into a kid’s bedroom. Remarkable progress was made in the week they were here, but the house is still a bit of a building site.

Philip decided to come in a week before his family to tidy up, paint and make the new room ready for kids to sleep in.

We’ve missed having the Hansen family around. Oscar has been without friends to play with. We’ve been without coworkers to bounce ideas off and ask questions to. We’ve needed to keep up on our own with the Kovol people’s expectations of us. It can be pretty exhausting to spend time with all our visitors. We feel blessed to have the Hansen family back with us. I’m looking forward to getting them caught up on all the language progress we’ve made and meeting their new twins.

Work on Bible translation and literacy has continued. Genesis 37 and 39 are both almost ready to be consultant-checked. Both chapters have been drafted, checked for naturalness and comprehension checked multiple times. The Ishmaelite traders are still giving me problems this week! I’m doing extra comprehension checks on that one paragraph and I’m still not getting it to communicate clearly.
The issue has been 37:28

 Then Midianite traders passed by

The interpretive question to answer is: are these Midianite traders the same as the Ishmaelite traders in v.25?

Then they sat down to eat. And looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead,

I’m interpreting it as yes, these are the same group. The brothers pull Joseph from the hole and sell him to the Ishmaelite/Midianite traders. Not that the Midianite traders pull Joseph from the hole and sell him to the Ishmaelite traders.
I tried to avoid making an interpretive decision in an earlier draft, but who did what ended up being hopelessly confused. Having decided that they are the same group, I am attempting to communicate in v.28 that “Midianite” is another name for the same Ishmaelite group. Nothing has worked so far, so I reached out to our translation consultant.

He affirmed my interpretive decision and suggested that I include the information about the Ishmaelites having a 2nd name in v.25. In PNG languages background information on participants is most commonly added when they are introduced. I get the sense that this is true in Kovol too. I can’t say for sure because I haven’t seen any Kovol texts where such detail was added. None of the stories I studied needed to do that, so I haven’t seen how the Kovol language handles that.

I’ve now got an idea for something new to try. Taking some information given in v.28, but adding it to v.25 instead, because that is how the Kovol language would naturally do it.

On the literacy side, I’ve settled on a template for our post-literacy library books. Having worked out the kinks and printed a copy to check it prints well, I’ve spent time this week converting the books I’ve completed so far into the new template. It’s necessary work, but it doesn’t feel like fast progress! This work has involved picking fonts, indent levels, and paragraph spacing etc, etc. and then defining it all as styles our team can use as we write new books.

A more interesting challenge has been figuring out how to punctuate Kovol text. Speech marks and their associated punctuation proved to be an unexpected rabbit hole. American English, British English, Tok Pisin and our neighbouring language Pal all do something different. So what are we to do? What feels right, I guess?
Do we even need speech marks? I don’t think I can answer that question. We’re encouraged to only use the punctuation we need. In Kovol we turn statements into questions by putting an “ig” at the end of the sentence. You can however, also raise your tone at the end of the sentence and omit the “ig”. That means a question mark is required for those cases. Exclamation marks on the other hand don’t seem to be necessary. The content of what is said seems enough.

When it comes to speech marks the question is “Will it assist Kovol readers or not?” We just don’t know. I’m so used to seeing them and Kovol texts punctuated with speech marks look much clearer to me, but that’s my English language bias coming through. What will the Kovol people think? We won’t know until after our first literacy class. Until then I’ll be using speech marks because I like it.

Once Philip and Natalie settle in, I’ll be sure to ask what they think. For the moment Philip is busy painting and sweeping. We’ve had some good chances to catch up already and enjoy meals with Philip. We’re very excited for their kids to arrive so we can watch Oscar running and playing with them once more.

There was a big turnout of Kovol people to welcome Philip back. There were many smiling faces and warm handshakes. It’s encouraging to sit and witness the fact that we’ve become a valued part of the Kovol community.
I dropped in on an impromptu meeting of Kovol leaders yesterday afternoon. There was a discussion on what Philip’s return meant for our work. The Kovol people welcomed us into their community 4 years ago and not much has happened since then. Expectations are high. Some expectations of what our work will look like are unrealistic, but they’ve been waiting and haven’t seen much.

Lord willing though, our literacy program will be ready to begin next year. I’m glad of God’s providence that I got to sit in and listen to the meeting. As discussion died down I was able to affirm one of the leaders who gave a more measured view of what would be happening. Philip and Natalie will get back to language study, I will continue to translate and write literacy books and in the new year some time we’re expecting our first literacy class. I apologised, as I often do, for how slowly we are moving. It has taken us years to learn the Kovol language and translation is now moving forward at a slow crawl. Everything just takes time and once again I apologised that we missionaries were so slow and dim-witted 🙂