The Prodigal Joy Returns: Part 2 - The Answer Twelve Years in the Making

With my guarded nervousness settling into a suppressed excitement, I and my five Gmz co-translators entered the translation office and sat down together for the very first time. I glanced at my clock – 8:28am – two minutes early. I shook my head in amazement and launched into the agenda I had rehearsed over and over again in my mind. Are there any questions about this work? The hours? The pay? Etc. Nothing. I thanked them for coming on time and explained to them that I needed that to continue. In fact, although 8:30-noon is only 3.5 hours, I said that if they arrived before the 8:30am opening prayer and stayed until noon, I would pay them for a full 4 hours of work. They nodded with understanding so I continued, “This is God’s work, therefore, every morning we must begin with genuine prayer for God’s help. Without his help, we will never succeed.” No convincing was needed here and I soon had a volunteer to join me in opening our work with prayer.

 

Remembering the next item on the agenda, I introduced our tools: the English Bible, the Amharic New Testament, the Greek New Testament and the published New Testament in a different dialect of Gmz. In the discussion that followed I learned that they all shared the idea that the Bible was originally written in Amharic. This extended my introduction of the Greek New Testament as I explained why I would frequently be referring back to and giving priority to this one. We then talked about another major world religion that does not allow their Scriptures to be translated into any other language. In contrast, we talked about how the God of the Bible is different and that he wants everybody to be able to understand his message in their own mother-tongue. It’s always exciting for me to teach and re-teach these Truths, for they are the basis upon which we have dedicated our career in serving God.

 

When I sensed their understanding of the written tools we would be using, I turned their attention to the computer screen, and specifically the computer program called “Adapt It.” This program, developed by the organization we belong to, was specifically designed to assist and speed up translation projects where there already is a published translation in a related language/dialect. I showed them the simple layout where each word from the “other” Gmz New Testament has a blank box underneath it where we can add the correct word in our dialect. Then I showed them how the next time the program encounters that same word, the translation is automatically inserted into the blank box. So, the more data that gets inputted, the larger the database grows and the faster that translation snowball gets rolling (no I did not use the snowball analogy with them!).

 

With all the introductions behind us, we finally turned to the text of Scripture. I explained that the opening story in the Gospel of Luke was a difficult story to translate. Those of you blog-nuts who would ace the TAW blog trivia game surely remember the blog last November entitled “Crash and Burn…Rookie” in which my first attempt at Scripture-based story translation was a total disaster partially due to the difficulty of the Zechariah story, the same story found in Luke chapter 1. Not wanting to repeat that failure, I opted to begin with a much easier passage: Luke 15 with its nice parables of the lost sheep, lost coin and lost (or prodigal) son. The decision turned out to be a good one as we launched into the text for the first time as translators.

 

Now I could give you a play-by-play of every discussion we had revolving around every word in the original text versus the translated text, and some of you fellow-nerds would actually enjoy that, but I will spare the rest of you such detail. As we labored through the verses, learning the best team strategies as we went, I was amazed by several things. First, it was eye-opening to see how little the published Gmz New Testament actually communicated to the Gmz speakers in the area where we live. Sure, they could understand some words, but there were very few sentences that they could accurately translate without me first telling them what it was supposed to mean. In fact, at the end of the day, when I looked back over the boxes now filled in with our first seven verses of translated Scripture, less than 10% of the words remained the same from the other Gmz dialect. So my first real brushes with the language variation left me all-the-more convinced of the need for this second translation. Second, I was amazed at the ease of the computer program and even within the first few verses I began to see it work its magic by suggesting translations for previously dealt-with words. Finally, I was surprised that despite it being slow-going, tedious and mentally challenging work, it was also a LOT of fun to see the guys interact (a.k.a. argue) over difficult concepts and preferred wording and then at the end of the discussion to see an agreed-upon product saved into the computer.

 

As time was winding down, we found ourselves faced with our most difficult verse of the day, Luke 15:7 “I tell you that in the same way (as the happy sheep owner) there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Two comparative adjectives (‘same way’ and ‘more’), two relative clauses (‘sinner who repents’ and ‘persons who do not…’), five key Biblical terms (‘rejoice,’ ‘heaven,’ ‘sinner,’ ‘repent,’ and ‘righteous’) and a difficult ‘obligation’ construction that I have not yet found in Gmz (‘need to…’). We had encountered problems earlier in the day, but this was our first Goliath verse. Without building unrealistic hopes of finishing it that day, I plowed into an explanation of all that was happening in this sentence. Upon finishing, I threw the ball into their court to begin reconstructing these ideas in the Gmz language. Despite mental fatigue that accompanied the very end of their first day of work, these first young men surprised me by quickly discussing it and coming up with what appeared to me as two complete sentences, encompassing all that I had asked for. Just as the clock struck noon, I saved our first Goliath verse into the computer where it would wait for further review first thing the next morning. With an uncontrollable full-toothed smile, I thanked my co-translators for their hard work that day and we soon headed out into the blinding sunlight.

 

Maybe it was beginners luck, maybe it was the rose-colored perspective of a novice, or maybe it was simply a gift from God, but that first day in the translation office was enough to make me as giddy as an infatuated schoolboy. Seriously, I must have looked silly as I walked home from the office that day with a HUGE grin on my face and a noticeable bounce in my step. Still filled with excitement, I sat down for lunch with Andrea and Micah (I love it when I arrive home and lunch is on the table! Am I spoiled or what?). Sparking up conversation, I casually asked, “So what did you do this morning?” To which Andrea began, “Well, we visited the chickens for a bit and then we went for a walk to see…” I tried to listen to my wife’s response, but my ears gradually tuned out as my eyes began to fill with tears. Unconsciously, my mind had apparently overheard my question to Andrea and mistakenly thought IT was being addressed. “What did you do this morning?” “I translated Scripture into the Gmz language.” It was true…really true and the power and depth of that true statement was astounding – like a sudden downpour of joy in my innermost being. No longer was I studying linguistics at Moody, no longer was I gaining ministry and life experience at Campus Life, no longer was I studying theology and graduate-level linguistics in Dallas, no longer were we in the Wycliffe application phase, the “partnership development” phase, the field orientation phase, the Amharic learning phase, the waiting phase for Micah’s birth, the Gmz language learning phase, the work permit renewal phase or the delay for unrest in our work area phase nor ANY OTHER phase we had encountered in our long road of preparation for Bible translation. No, for the first time in my life, I could honestly respond to this causal question “What did you do this morning?” with the very answer that my heart had longed to give since its specific calling to Bible translation more than 12 years ago: “This morning, I translated Scripture into the Gmz language.” I have waited twelve years to be able to say that, and the joy that comes along with it, makes it exponentially worth the wait.