Tag Archives: Wycliffe

Just some things to think about

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I’m starting to notice that I’m becoming institutionalised. Three years ago, as a newbie with Wycliffe Bible Translators, I found everything new, exciting and amazingly interesting. Now, after being asked for the… well, I’ve lost count… time, which version of the Bible we translate, I’m just wondering if what I accept as blindingly obvious is really so far off the radar of everyone else that we should be making more of it.

For example, the New Scientist has published an article about the fact that the concept of time isn’t necessarily viewed in the same way by every culture.

“HERE and now”, “Back in the 1950s”, “Going forward”… Western languages are full of spatial metaphors for time, and whether you are, say, British, French or German, you no doubt think of the past as behind you and the future as stretching out ahead. Time is a straight line that runs through your body.

Once thought to be universal, this “embodied cognition of time” is in fact strictly cultural. Over the past decade, encounters with various remote tribal societies have revealed a rich diversity of the ways in which humans relate to time (see “Attitudes across the latitudes”). The latest, coming from the Yupno people of Papua New Guinea, is perhaps the most remarkable. Time for the Yupno flows uphill and is not even linear.

Read the full article here

Once I would have found that really interesting, now I just think ‘Duh! Isn’t that obvious?’. Especially as Sue Pearson gave a presentation on this very theme   in a public lecture at Wycliffe last year.

How not to do word studies

We’ve known and spoken about stuff like this for years, is it really still surprising?
OK, maybe the challenges of cross-cultural communication are still surprising to some, but now the website OneNewsNow.com has managed to get a whole article out of the challenges of serving a remote community when a runway becomes unfit for use.

But Bible translation takes more than just sitting down with a native speaker and a Bible. Multiple obstacles must be hurdled. And the hurdles may look different than you think.

In the Philippines, the obstacles don’t necessarily come in the form of government limitations or even in lack of willing missionaries. Sometimes challenges come in packages as simple as transportation.

 read the full article here
Really, do people find that news surprising? Isn’t it obvious? Or is this just institutionalisation showing its hand?
So, for those of you surprised by the preceding observations, some quick bullet pointers.
  • Languages aren’t the same. Some countries have no words for snow, while others have more than one. We may think that the heart is the home for our emotions, others think it’s their liver. Bible translation isn’t as easy as substituting one word for another – if you do you could be communicating the very opposite of what you intend to say. (More info here)
  • Bible translation… missions… don’t just rely on the skills and abilities of a few talented individuals. We need people who can build runways too. Actually, teaching (western kids in western style schools in English), IT, Marketing Communications, video editing, project management, accounting, are all valuable skills without which we are sunk. Do you think you need a MTh to be any use overseas? Someone who can repair a car engine or keep track of the money are just as (if not more) desperately needed. (More info here)

And, in case you were wondering, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, not English – so which version do you think we would translate? (More info here)

Global Connections: 2020 Vision

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What part do you think Christians in the UK will be playing in mission in 10 years? Just think, another 10 years and it’s going to be 2022! – maybe we will all be travelling in spaceships.

The Global Connections conference that I’ve just come back from was thinking about mission and the future, what it’s going to be like, how the church in the Global South is going to have way more impact on us in the West, what’s happened to our old models of mission, what part the Church in the UK is going to play.

I think I have been mostly impacted by the question of the role of the Church. Mission agencies simply don’t exist without the Church, but how do we connect and work together rather than in isolation?

So, the question I’m asking you:

  • How can mission agencies help your church with local and world mission?
  • How can your church get involved in God’s mission in the UK and overseas?

I’d be interested to hear your comments.

Nigerian exploits – interviews, photographs, shaking hands and rough roads

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I’ve just taken a look at my little recording machine. Over the past five days I’ve recorded more than six hours of interviews and spoken to 25 or more people. That doesn’t include the video we recorded during the three days of business meetings, or the many hundreds of photographs that have either been snapped quickly or composed properly.

Not only that, we’ve met at least three village or tribal chiefs, countless district heads, translation chairmen, co-ordinators and project staff. We’ve been sung to by choirs, greeted in churches, and on Sunday we stood up in front of 4,500+ worshippers at the dedication of some offices for the Church of Christ in Nigeria and talked a bit about Bible translation. Quite an experience.

The hospitality here has been extraordinary. Certainly we’ve not gone hungry. There’s been everything from fish to goat and an almost endless supply of rice.

We’ve travelled through some of the most beautiful countryside on some of the world’s worst roads. A twenty kilometre journey that anywhere else would have taken no more than 15 minutes to complete took well over an hour.

Up here on the plateau the temperatures are moderate. At night it’s cool (15 – 20 degrees Celsius) and daytime temperatures up to the low 30s. But off the plateau it can be more extreme. Right now it’s cooler, being the end of the rainy season, but give it a couple of months and standing under a cold shower will be even more appealing.

I’m now trying to get my head around cataloguing material before travelling home. Making sure we have the names of all the people who appear in the pictures, checking that their names are spelt correctly that we know which language we were in at the time. I’ve taken good notes but it’s easier to check while we are here than it is to check by e-mail when we get home.

There’s also the challenge of making sure we have all the images and video that we need before heading home. Once out of the country it’s not so easy to fill in the gaps so it’s important that we do it all now. Too much is way better than not enough.

So for the next two days we will be working around the office. On Friday we get back on the road to Abuja, a 4.5hr journey, before overnighting in the Catholic guest house. On Saturday morning it will be an early start to get the morning flight back to London – I say morning flight, I mean only flight. All things going to plan I should be back in the UK on Saturday afternoon. Here’s hoping it’s still nice and warm!

Does Bible translation matter?

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Around the world there are millions of people living below the poverty line, suffering from the injustice of war, famine and drought. Quite rightly, our hearts are moved, we long to bring relief from suffering and pain. So we give our support to charities that bring food supplies, clean water, shelter because, while Bible translation sounds very noble, very right, it’s not the immediate need so we put that to one side for later. When the problem’s fixed and people can live, then we’ll worry about the Bible message.

But the Bible does matter. It matters to those on the edges of society. Those who have suffered war, famine and drought, because very often the stars of the Bible story are people who have been there. They’ve suffered the worst hardships and yet have found the words to praise God and hope for the future.

Does Bible translation matter? I think it does, and so does Eddie who spoke at Bangor Worldwide this week. You can see what he has to say in this video…

Eddie Arthur – Wycliffe Bible Translators from Bangor Worldwide on Vimeo.

Peanuts for breakfast

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I got up at 5:45 this morning to wave my colleagues off. They’ve gone onto Ghana for another story. The plan was then to go back to bed and sleep until lunchtime because I doubt I’ll get any sleep on tonight’s flight. But, today is going to be hot and by 6:15 it was too warm and light to sleep. So, I’ve been up nibbling peanuts – given to us by one of the pastors we met on our journey and a local product from the Bissa region of Burkina Faso – and writing emails.

The plan for today is to have lunch with a colleague based at the SIL centre here in Ouagadougou before going over to ANTBA (Wycliffe Burkina) for the afternoon. I’m supposed to be ‘resting’ before getting to the airport at 6pm, but sleeping during the day has alluded me for most of the trip. Maybe the early start from today will change that.

I’ve been trying to think of a story that I can share here which will illustrate the experience of being in Burkina Faso, but that won’t steal the thunder from the stories that Hazel has been writing.

I guess last Sunday will stick in my memory for the longest. Because Biblefresh is supporting two translations we had to get to two communities and on Sunday that means two church services. Only, church here happens early to avoid the worst of the heat. That wasn’t going to work for us, so one pastor decided to start his service early, the other put his back until later – waiting for us to arrive before calling the congregation together.

Both services involved some level of translation, usually from French into whatever the local language was. People talk about African church services running for a long time, but out in the villages I suspect that a lot of that time is simply because you’re trying to conduct the service in a language that everyone will understand – this means speaking everything at least twice!

You know there are people here who go to church and don’t understand a word of what’s said. They rely on someone to translate it for them later when they get home. Could you imagine us doing that in the UK? – There’s probably some joke in there about preachers teaching in some foreign language even when they are speaking English, but you’re probably there before me.

Bon voyage! See you back in the UK.

A blog from Burkina

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Well, this has been a rather hectic week.

Last Friday morning I left the UK and flew to Burkina Faso with a journalist and a photographer to visit a couple of language groups in the Bissa region of the country. Two flights and a three hour car journey later, we were meeting pastors and church leaders who, as yet, preach to a congregation from a Bible in a language that most don’t understand.

All the heat and passion of an African church service is there, but with only about 10% of the population understanding French it’s a real struggle to teach. Even the pastors are saying that they have to use two or three different language versions of the Bible to get even a partial understanding of what the real meaning is.

The highlight of the trip has been visiting local people in their homes and hearing about their lives and how they have come to know God, despite the difficulties.

The stories we have heard, the video that has been shot and the photographs that have been taken, will all be shared with Christians in the UK through Biblefresh. It’s hoped that we will be able to encourage the church at home to support the church here in Burkina Faso and help the thousands of people in the Bissa region hear of God in their own language.

For me, I fly home tomorrow night in time to preach on Sunday morning in the language that I have spoken since I was a child. It really puts a whole new perspective on things.

Trauma Healing

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It’s great how the Bible can make such a difference to people who have suffered hurt and pain in their lives. The following interview was recorded with Margaret Hill and John Ommani, two Scripture Use Consultants, who work across Africa helping people to recover from the effects of traumatic experiences.

Someone new

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It’s always good to hear about new people joining Wycliffe Bible Translators, and even better when you can read a little bit about them. We work within an interesting community, with so many people from so many countries [see stats here] working together towards a common goal.

Sarah Barnes is in the process of joining Wycliffe in Canada and will go into a role recruiting a mobilising more people to get involved in the translation movement. You can read more about her on her blog – she’s still got a way to go raising her support before she can start properly so you can see how that’s going too.

One page worth taking an extended look at, is the collection of videos she’s put together illustrating all the different aspects covered by the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Changing views

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Photograph from Ruth Hubbard's blog http://ruthhubbard.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/gloria-a-dios/

Ruth Hubbard is Vice-President of Communications for Wycliffe Bible Translators in the US. Recently she was in Guatemala, where Cameron Townsend – the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators – first recognised the need for Bible translation.

In a recent blog post Ruth reflected on how things have changed.

  • When Cameron Townsend started work he thought that there were about 1,000 languages in the world. It turns out that there are around 7,000.
  • In Guatemala it’s possible to see the results of the early days of Bible translation. Not only are there Christians as a result of the Bibles that were produced in the minority languages, but, these Christians are involved in leadership within the church.

Uncle Cam (that’s what some call him) had a vision that was both expansive and limited. He saw a day when people from every language community would have access to God’s Word and therefore could decide for themselves whether to enter into a relationship with Him or reject that invitation. That vision is in the process of being fulfilled. Today there are just over 2,000 language communities with no access to Scripture who need it, and around 2,000 with a translation in progress.

You can read the whole piece on Ruth’s blog Hubbard’s Cupboard

It just got me wondering, what do we take for granted today that within 80 years will have changed completely?