In the begining God…

It is with great delight that I’ve been able to start Bible translation again. We’ve been through a busy season of visiting supporters and churches, but that has now mostly drawn to a close. We’ve been very blessed to have so many people interested in us and showing us love over these last months. This week, we’ve been able to hit the pause button on visits, and we’re looking forward to enjoying a more laid-back time in Bracknell.

Gerdine’s parents came to visit us for 4 days. We took them around Windsor, and Oscar, Alice and Mille got to show off their room, their space.

We have one more speaking engagement booked, but other than that, November and December are now “relax and live in Bracknell time”. We’re beginning to feel settled, finally. How ironic it is that I’m now starting to get quotes for our return flights to PNG in January! The moment we’re settled and feeling more relaxed, we’ve started thinking ahead to our next journey! Today I received my first quote from the travel agent for flights back to Goroka.

The bookcase we ordered on Amazon for the school room finally arrived after being delayed. Gerdine organised it just as she liked, and the very next day my mind turned to what we are going to do with it in 2 months 🙂 Such is life as a missionary! We’re grateful that it sits on us lightly — we’ve adapted to it. I’m looking forward to returning to PNG.

Over the last weeks, I’ve been able to take time most days to continue working away at the Kovol literacy program. I’m sick and tired of poring over it, honestly. It was a massive relief to be able to zip it up as “finished” and send it to Philip and Natalie in Kovol for checking. It’s their problem now :p

With my work on the literacy program finishing (for now), I’ve been able to get into the work I’ve been looking forward to: translating Genesis 1. When I say translating, I only mean the first step, the exegetical draft into the Kovol language. I am incapable of properly translating without Kovol people alongside me.

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning…” How do I translate beginning? I know the word “mesag” means first, “o” means before and “o isig” means long before. I guess that I can double it up and say “O isig isig”. The problem is that my guesses tend to be wrong most of the time! I’ve written a note to check that with a Kovol speaker.
“God created the heavens and the earth.” How about “God yombong, hotugune usomot”, “God mud/land, sky made”?

I’ve got several things to check there:

• Is yombong “mud/land” a good word for earth?
• Does the combination of yombong “mud/land” and hotugune “sky” communicate everything? Or do I need to use the phrase me me teng “thing thing everything?
• The verb I used, “usomot” is used of ladies making clothes, but also of fixing things like fences. I’ve heard it used about God making Adam’s body before. Is it the right word, or would the more general word “nolot” which means “to make” fit better? Or even “et”?

Right, I should note all of that down. I need to check it all with a Kovol speaker, then it all needs comprehension checking with people who haven’t heard the verse before.

On to verse 2, the earth was “without form and void”. What does that mean? The commentaries are opened and I read that the idea is one of an empty, deserted and chaotic place. I can look at a dozen different English translations to see the different ways the idea is presented in concise English. Then the real challenge is thinking of a Kovol equivalent. I’ve decided to write down “the land was a big, empty place. There was nothing.”

Interestingly, I remember that I have a paraphrase of the creation story from an old Kovol man in our village. I’ve been able to look that up. He said that “There was only water and darkness. Everything was in the water.” It’s not quite a close enough translation for “the earth was without form and void” to use, but it does give me my vocabulary for darkness in the next verse.

As I worked through verses 1-19, I had to think through all these different things:

• What vocabulary to use for God’s spirit hovering over the waters. Does the Kovol verb “flying” actually mean “flying by flapping wings”, in which case a more general “wandering over the waters” may be better.
• When God says “let there by light” should I render that as God saying “light be!” (a command) or a statement “light will be”?
• When the day is labelled the first day should I use Kovol cardinal numbers? (there are only 2) Or the male birth order nouns? Or Tok Pisin cardinal numbers?
• Is “wind place” a good translation of expanse/firmament in v6?
• In v.7 we see the first “And it was so.” The phrase is repeated several times. Should I translate it equally generally so that the same Kovol phrase is used throughout, or would it communicate better if each time it occurred, a more descriptive phrase was used, for example “And the waters were split like that”?
• Kovol has no word for “vegetation” or all plants. Does “grass” and “trees” cover all plants in Kovol?
• When the lights are said to be for “times and seasons”, what best translates seasons? The Kovol I can think of is “Hungry time”? “Rain and sun time?” “Months and other times?”
• The 2 lights in v14 refers to sun and moon, but the Hebrew text doesn’t provide the names. Do I need to explicitly say sun and moon for people to make the connection?
• The lights “rule the day and night”. Can the Kovol language personify the sun and moon so that they can rule?
• Giving light to the earth is a metaphor. Can the Kovol language personify the sun and say it gives light?

I need to sit with a translation helper to work through all of these questions. As an outsider who learned the language as an adult, I really don’t know!
It’s very exciting to get back into translating again.

It’s a privilege to be translating God’s word. It’s an awesome responsibility. It’s special. In some ways, though, it’s just like any other work that we do in that there are challenges and problems. Having spent the morning working up to v.19 I decided to do a quick spell check on what I had done before saving it.

I’m using Paratext Lite as my laptop runs Linux and Lite is the version of Paratext I can run. To spell check I have to switch from the unformatted view of the text to the basic view. When I did so, however, parts of the verses got cut up and copied and pasted in random places. Sigh. I then had to very careful read through word by word to find all the copy and paste mistakes and remove them. Once done, I switched the view and it happened again! Such are the software glitches and pains of work, and Bible translation is no exception! I’ve had such problems before, unfortunately, and I’m ready to say now that I shouldn’t be using Lite as I can’t really trust it not to mess with text I’ve completed. I’ll have to work in a VM until the new version of Paratext 10 is ready to go 🙂