What a difference a word makes!

Sin in Supyire

In translating the Bible it is sometimes difficult to find words in the target language that convey the meaning that was intended in the original text. One word that has been troublesome for the Supyire translation team is SIN. Traditionally in Supyire Protestant churches the word "kapi" has been used, which literally means "bad thing." This includes acts of violence, theft and treachery, and accidents due to lightning strikes. However, it doesn't include what the Supyire consider to be lesser sins like lying, adultery, pride and embezzlement, so most people feel they never commit "kapi." The Catholics, on the other hand, have used the word "kakuu", which means "error" or "mistake." While the Protestant word is too strong, the Catholic word is too weak, minimizing the wonder of Christ's sacrifice and God's willingness to forgive them. The team had considered using "dirty thing" or borrowing the Arabic word for sin, but nothing seemed just right. Then one day while translating I Timothy, almost without thinking, Samuel used the word "katiimbaala" which means "something which is not straight." The team was delighted to find as they checked it out that the term covers the complete range of things which are not right.
(National translators Baky and Samuel, Wycliffe translators Michael & Miranda Jemphrey, Mali, Africa, Rod & Julie Davis prayer letter, March 2002)

A Stunned Father

The first Scripture that I translated was the Joseph story in Genesis 37-50. Near the end of that account, when Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and they returned home and told their father, Jacob, that Joseph was still alive, the Hebrew text says that Father Jacob was "stunned."

The people with whom we work have two related words for "stunned," "stunned with delight" (like when one of your relatives unexpectedly leaves you a million dollars in their will), and one that means "stunned with horror" (like being told that your house has burned to the ground).

Well, when I rough-drafted this, I knew of only one vernacular term for "stunned," and I thought that it was generic like English (not specified for delight or for horror). The word I used was the "horror" one. Thank goodness, my co-translator quickly picked up the error, and I learned something in the process!

Hold Your Paddle

Colossians 3:7 says, "At one time you yourself used to live according to such desires, when your life was dominated by them." In Takia, I said it this way: "Your evil thoughts held your steering paddle, and that's how you used to live." Ulum am yabi literally means "hold your paddle," but the real meaning is "steers your course." We use the picture of the paddle as a strong way of talking about directing men.
(National Translator Malio, Takia language. Bruce & Glenys Waters, Papua New Guinea)

The Feather-clad Prophet

When we began translation in Deg, a language of northwestern Ghana, we started with the Gospel of Mark. Having struggled through the complexities of the introduction, we came to some interesting details of what John the Baptist ate and wore. It seems his garment of choice was woven from camel's hair. There are no camels around that area, so I asked if they knew what a camel was. "Oh, yes," I was told, "we call it tataa." Great! That made it easy. It was much later that someone working in another language told me they had the same word referring to an ostrich. Suddenly I had a niggling suspicion. I went back and asked the Deg chief to describe a tataa for me. He said it was very tall, very strong, and someone could even ride on it. Then the crucial question: How many legs does it have? "Two," he said in some surprise. So it was an ostrich instead of a camel! And to make matters worse, the word for hair and feather is the same, so here in our initial draft, we had the stern and austere John the Baptist clad in ostrich feathers! No wonder all the people from Jerusalem and the surrounding area came out to see him!
(Marj Crouch, Wycliffe translator, Ghana, Africa)

The Wrong Connection

The Malei language has several conjunctions. Because their meanings do not match up neatly with English words, it is easy to pick the wrong conjunction when translating.

“Some, however, did receive Him and believed in Him” (John 1:12a TEV). The context of this verse concerns the fact that even though some people did not welcome Jesus into their homes and villages, there were some who did and also ended up believing what Jesus said about Himself.

The English back-translation of John 1:12 in Malei came out this way: “But those who welcomed Him believed Him.” This implied that those who welcomed Jesus also believed Him. This might be true, but it is not what the text says!

The problem lay in the choice of conjunction we had used for “and.” That particular conjunction, ma, indicates that the following clause contains a verb which moves the story line along. So the “welcome/receive” verb was background information while the “believe” verb was the main idea of the sentence.

“But some welcomed Him and (ma) believed Him."

We chose another conjunction, ba, which put the verbs on an equal footing to mean: “Those who welcomed Him and also believed Him, He allowed these people to become Big Giver’s children.”

It wasn’t until we saw the back-translation of this verse that we clearly understood the subtle difference in meaning between ma and ba. Furthermore, we almost certainly would not have found this mistake if we were doing our own back translations. We are very thankful that a local, Malei-speaking, community-school teacher is willing and able to do them.
(John & Amy Lindstrom, Papua New Guinea)

A Good Burden

Florrie had started work on the Gospel of Matthew. I watched her progress through that book more closely than I had any of the others, because that was the book which had been left until last, and when it was finished, the first draft of the entire New Testament would be finished.

When she reached chapter 11, we wondered if a Mazatec might not understand verses 28 and 30 of that chapter even more easily than people at home. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.... My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Most Mazatecs from the time they are little are expected to carry their share of physical burdens. They use a long rope with a wide band in the middle section. The ends of the rope are tied around the pack to be carried, the band is placed across the top of the carrier's head, and the pack hangs down his back from the top of his head.

Mazatecs are very conscious of the difference between a "bad burden" and a "good burden." Bad burdens have sharp edges which cut into their backs, or moving parts which tend to throw them off balance as they walk. A good burden is light and shaped to their backs.

Esteban, like most men, had to carry firewood on his back. After carrying it up the mountain, he was so glad to get rid of it that he never lifted it down. He tossed his head, the rope came off, and the pack hit the ground. Even though we were inside the house, Florrie and I knew when he had arrived by the thud with which the pack landed. We could also hear Esteban's whistled sigh of relief which almost invariably followed his release from the burden.

Florrie and I remembered Esteban and his firewood when we read the verse: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Perhaps, at least for the time being, we could translate yoke with the Mazatec term for "carrying rope."
Day by day more and more verses were done and the 3 x 5 slips on which they were written stretched longer and longer behind the Matthew index card. Then on April 26, 1941, the slip with Matthew 28:20 was placed there, and at that moment the first draft of the Mazatec New Testament was done.
(Eunice V. Pike, Words Wanted, Moody Press, 1958, p 43-44.Of the Mazatec language, Mexico.)