The WHAT of God?

Though our goal thus far has been to learn Gmz words, we are not doing that in a vacuum. In other words, all along we have in mind the goal of our work – to serve and equip the Gmz church through the translation of Scripture. So, that is to say, we are especially keen to keep our ears open for words that might become important down the road – words like belief, love, sacrifice, worship, trust, etc. Finding such key words is one of the hardest parts of Bible translation. One particular key word that the Catholic Fathers gave us as an example of where they struggled was with regard to the word “kingdom.” You see, the Gmz seem to always borrow the Amharic word “mengist,” but such borrowing of key terms is a big no-no in producing mother tongue Scripture. That was why I was so surprised this past Tuesday when Wohis volunteered a new word: “t’isa malet mengist” (trans. t’isa means government.).

 

“Ah ha,” I immediately thought, “wow that was easy” as I remembered the Catholic’s wrestling with finding such a term. After class that day, I remember looking at the word “t’isa” in my notebook and imagining it in Scripture down the road as “t’isa ala Musa” (trans. “the kingdom of God”).

 

Now, if these first 6 weeks have taught me anything about language learning, it is that our first impressions on a given word’s meaning, may not be correct. Because of this, we have been diligent to check every new word with at least one of our other language helpers. Whether it is the less than perfect Amharic that we all are trying to communicate in, difference of dialect or just plain error, we have found and made many corrections in our data. But, none of the corrections were as big or as significant as the word “t’isa.”

 

On Thursday morning, we routinely checked our Wohis words with Habtamu, so when “t’isa” came up, I was excited to get confirmation of this important key term that, in my mind, had already been printed in the Gmz Bible. I said the word “t’isa” and waited for Habtamu’s response. Now, Habtamu is probably my brightest language helper so I expected an immediate response “mengist.” However, his unanticipated silence caused me to look up from my notebook. I could tell by Habtamu’s expression that he was thinking of how to explain this word, which told me that it wasn’t as easy as the generic and common word for “government” that I had hoped for. Well, my hopes and dreams for “t’isa” came crashing to the ground when Habtamu finally spoke. “T’isa” in Amharic is “fesa.” Now, I knew the Amharic word “fes” but I was certainly hoping that that was not what he was referring to. The explanation that he gave thereafter confirmed that in fact it was “you know, air in the stomach comes out.” “On the bottom?” “Yea, on the bottom.” Yikes. I confirmed Habtamu’s understanding of this term with Bizare two days later only to solidify that the word “t’isa” has no place in Scripture, much less the prominent role I had envisioned. (Then again, maybe a lost verse will be found…“Jesus said to Judas, ‘can you go buy some Beano for Peter? The Last Supper isn’t sitting well with his stomach.’”)

 

Anyway, as I have thought more about it, I couldn’t help but smirk at the translation I had created in my mind: “The t’isa of God is near;” “the t’isa of God is within you;” and what’s with Jesus’ obsession with encouraging people with the idea of one day entering the “t’isa” of God? So yea, moral of the story, it’s always good to check your first impressions.

 

Ps. As mentioned in earlier blogs, there are normal, explosive and implosive consonants in Gmz. Appropriately, the “t” in “t’isa” is clearly explosive. I don’t even want to imagine an implosive “t’isa.”