First translation check

This week was a huge milestone in the Kovol work, our first translation check. We arranged for a translation consultant to come in to check Genesis 37,39,40,41,42,43,44,45, and 46:1-7. Those chapters cover the Joseph story, a total of about 200 verses of “simple” narrative, which is great material to get started on as a new translator.

The Joseph story will be part of our evangelistic Bible teaching lessons when we present the gospel, and it will be great reading material for Kovol readers practising their literacy skills.

We arranged for Levi, our translation consultant, to come in on Tuesday, but this being PNG, and the weather in Kovol always giving our pilots headaches, the helicopter came within a few kilometres of Kovol when a wall of cloud engulfed us. If the helicopter had been there 10 minutes earlier, it would have landed, but the clouds arrived and caused the helicopter to have to turn around. They landed in Madang to wait out the clouds, but bad weather settled in, and they returned to Goroka.

Such inefficiencies and hurdles are all part of the process out here. The helicopter burned an entire tank of fuel to get out here, only to not be able to land! I’m not sure who pays for that. Maybe we do, or perhaps NTM aviation covers it. It is a reminder of how messy and real life the task out here can be!

The day after, however, was beautiful weather, and Levi made it in. We started our translation check, and the procedure went like this:

• I read a paragraph of the Kovol translation to 3 Kovol speakers who had been minimally involved in the translation work up to this point (fresh ears).
• The 3 helpers were then asked to repeat the paragraph in Tok Pisin, PNG’s trade language, so Levi could understand.
• Levi compares what he hears to the back translation he is looking at and asks follow-up questions. These are vague questions like “what happened next?” to prompt the helpers to scan their memory and bring back up all the details.
• Levi wrote notes on what came back and what didn’t, and sometimes we made corrections on the spot.

You would think after the hundreds of hours I have spent translating and checking the text we would have caught most of the mistakes already, and yes we had, but we still found areas to improve!

In Genesis 44:5 it is said that Joseph practised divination. He would enquire about the future. Presumably, he was lying to scare his brothers a bit, as divination as a practice is condemned elsewhere in the Old Testament.
In Kovol I had found a phrase “a man who turns his eyes” while looking for a way to communicate this idea. The man would “turn his eyes” and see hidden things and things that were going to happen.
During the check, Levi asked my helpers, “What is the meaning of turning the eyes?” There followed 10 minutes or so of the helpers squirming in their chairs and saying “They turn their eyes and they see things”. “What do they see?” Awkward silence.
Eventually, we found that the phrase did communicate the idea of seeing future events, or spiritual reasons for things, but it seems that this isn’t a phrase well understood by younger people. I had elicited the phrase from an older guy, but the younger guys were scared, it seemed, to comment on it in case they got the details wrong. It seemed to be something they had heard in passing, but didn’t really know about. Thus, we made a change to disambiguate the term a bit. We wrote that Joseph “turned his eyes and saw the work that would happen.” This change should help younger readers understand the initial phrase.

The checking process continued all day on Wednesday and up to 11 am on Thursday. We went through at a pretty good speed. Levi has his notes written up that he will send me with a list of little changes to make and things to have another go at. Our phrase for “captain of the guard” was a total flop, so that needs redrafting and checking again. I’ve bashed my head against that phrase several times before. I think we’re now on the 6th time around of redoing it and trying something else!
Once I’ve worked through those outstanding issues, the section will be marked as consultant-approved 🙂

It seems I’m on the right track as a translator. I’m not overly tied to the form, and I’m dynamically translating, but I do need to tighten up attention to detail, making sure I get all the details in when I draft. We also discussed the skill of back-translating into English. Is it better to back translate “Philip mena utugum” as “Philip food I gave” or “I gave food to Philip”?

Next on the translation list is Genesis 1. I have 6 working weeks left before we leave for our Home Assignment. In that time, I think I’ll be busy continuing to edit and format our literacy teacher’s manual. I asked Levi about what he thinks of my continuing to do exegetical drafts for the Kovol translation while I’m in Europe, and he thinks it is a great way to keep my head in the language.

I greatly appreciate all the work Levi has put in as a translation consultant to help us improve our Kovol translation of the Joseph story. I think I’m slowly picking up the skill of being able to translate, but I still have a huge amount of learning and improving to do. For now, though, I can sit back and think Genesis 37-45 in the Kovol language is (almost) done 😀