The Not-So-Jolly Green (Fleeced) Giant...Squirrel

I never realized how difficult it can be for two adults to politely share an umbrella. And I'm not  talking about twitterpated couples who welcome the opportunity of squeezing under the pocket-size variety. Quite on the contrary, I'm recalling the scene this past Monday afternoon as our business administrator/colleague, Esther, and I got caught in the rain on the way to a church denominational headquarters. Esther pulled out an umbrella and politely offered me space under its corner. I can't help but laugh as I try to envision what it looked like from across the street. An Ethiopian woman kindly sharing her pink umbrella with a not-so-Jolly Green (fleeced) Giant whose head was craned up under the nylon canopy. Sorry no photo for your enjoyment.

Arriving at the headquarters, I straightened my neck into its preferred position, adjusted my fleece and together Esther and I climbed the stairs to the first floor (did you catch that? The "first floor" here, and almost everywhere else in the world, is always the first floor ABOVE ground). Poking my head into the administrative office, we greeted a familiar face. "Do you have good news for us?" I asked, somewhat jokingly knowing that the four weeks of silence had meant only bad news. "No," she responded, "We have no progress to report on the annual renewal of your documents. In fact, I received word this morning that the person we need to see is out of the office all this week for trainings. There's really no hope of renewing it before it expires on April 1^st." Yikes, the reality of us having to leave the country in short order hit me square between the eyes.

An hour later, I arrived back at home and quickly relayed to Andrea all the new information Esther and I had learned. Somewhere in the midst of my head spinning with all the possibilities, my mind caught a relay from my stomach, "Feed me!" And so I began my usual afternoon search for quick and easy snacks. Fridge…no. Countertop fruit basket…no. Rubbermaid bin…yea! Like a missile honed in on its target, I snapped open the bin, grabbed a small cardboard box, and drew out one of God's greatest gifts to mankind – a pristine package of mint Oreo cookies! Without giving it any second thought, I ripped back the plastic and dove in. "You're opening those?!?" Andrea asked, questioning my judgment in choosing our most-treasured treat we had stored and protected for more months than I care to reveal; I know, it's worse than squirrels preparing for a bad winter! "Hey, if we're going to be in the States in a week or two…what's the point in saving them anymore?" She smiled, obviously overcome by my irrefutable logic, she herself partook in the afternoon deelish. "And," I thought to myself, "when I'm done smothering myself with these, I'm gonna move on to the malted-milk Easter eggs you brought back from the States last June!"

(update: Monday's news of "no hope remaining for renewal" has been revised, so that now, some level of hope has been restored! Pray with us for a grace-filled Monday, March 31^st.)

I Saw Satan Fall...Yet Again - Part 3

The Name of Satan: I remember back in language school days, Andrea and I ate lunch with another project's translation advisor in which he shared a lot about the specific highs and lows they had encountered. I remembered how he lamented, "The hardest term for us to come up with, believe it or not, was the name of Satan." Not remembering many of the details surrounding that difficulty, I tucked his vented frustration into my back pocket as a warning for when we began our work among the Gmz.

Much to my surprise, Satan had no foothold of frustration into the Gmz project with regard to his name…at least, not at first.  The people on Gesas mountain, where we first learned Gmz language, were all familiar with and accustomed to using Set'aana as the most powerful evil spirit. Pretty simple. Then, when we first started working with the official translation project, Set'aana was not questioned by any of the three translators, at least not that was brought to my attention. But boy, did the fireworks fly at one of our first meetings with the 15-person review committee. Apparently, all the churches in the project area (Gesas, where we live is not in that area) have been using a different term for Satan: Gaaleyaana. After one full hour of "animated discussion" (that's a "nice" euphemism to the actual tenor of the meeting), it became clear that the argument had nothing to do with accuracy, but rather entirely to do with what each individual person has grown accustomed to. In fact, it was stated numerous times that all Gmz know both names. At the end of the day, ALL 15 people on the review committee, and 1 translator supported the use of Gaaleyaana. That left only 2 translators in support of Set'aana, which in my mind closed the case. Not only was Gaaleyaana favored unanimously by all churches in the area, but it seemed to me that it was an actual Gmz word, whereas Set'aana is obviously borrowed from Hebrew. We're using the Gmz word for God (Misa), so why not use the Gmz word for his enemy? Unfortunately and much to my frustration, the two translators would not submit to the review committee's, nor my, argumentation and the emotional level was so incredibly high, I knew I could not go into the text and make changes from Set'aana to Gaaleyaana without severely damaging our working relationship. Yet, at the same time, I couldn’t allow Set'aana and thus in effect say that the review committee has no voice into the project – even when they speak unanimously! I could not make the decision, the Gmz would not give in. A definite rock and a hard place – with nowhere to turn.

And then, there was a breakthrough! As it turned out Gaaleyaana isn't a Gmz word at all! In conducting a survey, one of the translators was told, "Gaaleyaana isn't Gmz, it comes from my language, Agao!" Ok, so if neither Gaaleyaana nor Set'aana are true Gmz words, then they are equal in being loan words. Standing on equal ground, two additional pieces of evidence then pointed in favor of Set'aana. First, the southern Gmz New Testament translation used Set'aana and it is always good to be consistent with them, if possible. Second, if Gaaleyaana comes from the Agao language, then it will only be known in areas which have contact with Agao people (which is very strong in the project area, but not so much as one moves west or south). We want our  translation to reach as wide as possible and so Set'aana would be better (since Amharic uses it and Amharic's influence is nationwide). My new argumentation pleased the two translators who wanted Set'aana all along, but it didn’t impress the review committee one bit. Another hour "conversation" and the vote came out the same: a unanimous review committee and one translator in strong support for Gaaleyaana. The other two translators unwilling to lay down their swords. Back to the frustrated stale mate we'd already endured for nine months!

Then another unexpected breakthrough…coming from an unplanned conversation. One morning, two of the leaders of the Orthodox churched happened by our office on business unrelated to us. We invited them in and began to update them on some of our work. Knowing that one of them was Agao, we asked about the word Gaaleyaana, to which he responded "First of all, it's not Gaaleyaana, it's Gaanen. Secondly it isn't Agao, it is Amharic. We (meaning the Agao language) also borrowed it from Amharic." To any linguist, the link between Gaaleyaana and Gaanen is obvious. L's often morph into N's and Gmz nouns require adding the word-final "Ah" sound. Convinced of its origin in the Amharic word Gaanen, I had a new path to explore; my first question, what in the world does Gaanen mean in Amharic? Well, it didn't take long to find that Gaanen is used in the Amharic Bible not to translate "Satan", but rather "demon". I kept silent as the translation team and I say goodbye to our guests and we returned to other business. But later that night, I rustled up some more research, listed out some examples, and then tucked it away for the next morning's discussion: "In Luke's gospel, the word Gaanen is used for the various spirits which possess people (4:33, 7:33). In several passages, people are said to be possessed by multiple Gaanen (8:2, 8:30), Gaanens are the spirits over which Beelzabub (Satan) is said to rule (11:15ff), and there are specific types of Gaanen, such as the mute demon referred to in 11:14. Demons are to Satan, what angels are to God. So, for us to use the word Gaaleyaana for Satan is an incorrect translation, if in fact Gaaleyaana comes from the Amharic Gaanen. My job as the translation advisor is to be protector of correctness and so, with an argument like this, on the basis of accuracy, we can comfortably override the review committee's vote in this. Yes, all the churches in this area have been using Gaaleyaana for the name of Satan, but they are doing so incorrectly. And that is exactly the problem with borrowing words from other languages! They enter as empty containers which sometimes (maybe often times) get filled with unfortunate meanings and uses. To help correct the usages of gaaleyaana in Gmz churches, we can use it to translate demon, and Set'aana to translate Satan. What do you say?" Of course the two in favor of using Satan were on board immediately, but it wasn't their opinions I was wanting. I looked at the one translator who had stood firm with the review committee in favor of Gaaleyaana, "Is this our solution, will the review committee be angry with us if we go this route?" His answer shocked me, "Not if you explain it like you just did." I nearly leapt out of my skin as I heard those words come out of his mouth. You mean after months and months of boiling over arguments on what seemed to be an issue of mere preference, a solution based on solid evidence has been found? I couldn't believe it!

The motorbike ride home that night was filled with joy and like the 72 apostles who returned to Jesus with excited reports, I couldn't help but spill the story to Andrea, Micah and Grace over the dinner table (Grace didn't seem to care much…hmmmm…). Satan indeed had caused us enormous strife, frustration and division within our team in ways that honestly scared me. And yet, just hours earlier I had erased the name of Satan from our to-do list once-for-all, and I tell you, for that moment and the days which followed, my joy was complete and overflowing! Jesus shared in the 72's joy by relating how he had seen Satan fall from heaven like lightning when they were out casting out demons, so also I felt I had I just witnessed a profound victory in the spiritual battle that wages over every word our fingers tap into the worldview of Gmz believers.

 

I Saw Satan Fall...Yet Again - Part 2

Continued from previous post…

 

Baptism: Whereas the key term "holiness" gave us a loaded concept for which the Gmz language lacks the already pre-packaged equivalent, "baptism" presents us with a very different set of problems, problems which began with heated conflict. It stands to reason that some of the most difficult trees to topple are those well-rooted in the soil, by which I refer to words that the churches have already well-accustomed themselves to using. In the case of baptism, there are two words which have sunk their roots deep and spread them wide within their respective meadows of ecclesiastical tradition. To put it lightly, we walked right into a scrappy brawl between the "dunkers" and the "sprinklers".

 

"We need to use datahalik'w (meaning literally, 'pour on head') because the majority of our churches are already using that!" (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, etc.)

 

"No, we need to use dalimok'w (meaning 'to submerse in water') because that is what was done more commonly in the early church, so as to make it more historically accurate! (Baptist, Full Gospel Charismatic, etc)

 

"No, we can't use  dalimok'w because when a Gmz person hears that one person dalimok'w another, the most common meaning of that is that one DROWNED the other. Hey, meet my cousin, he's called John the Drownder!"

 

And on and on. From day one, my advice was a strong and clear, we CANNOT choose either one of those without favoring one church tradition over the other, therefore we ought to forget about the contentious MODE of baptism, and instead go back to what the Greek word baptizo generically means – washing. The Gmz language has a nice general word for washing - ma'efatsa. It is a well-known Gmz word and communicates the idea of cleansing/purification, why not use that? The three translators, however, shot me down in unison - saying that such a generic word cannot be used for a special ceremony like the Christian baptism. A fair argument, just as many of us wouldn't fancy changing our English Bibles to read "John the Washer". But, thinking quickly on my feet, I remembered that generic words can be modified by limiting phrases. In the case of baptism, many times it is linked with repentance and the washing of sin so I then suggested adding the phrase alamakwaaeya nilaganasa, meaning "washing of the return from within sin (ie. washing of repentance)." Hoping that that would silence the "too common" argument, I was immediately disappointed to catch expressionless looks on all three of the translators' faces. "No, it will never work, people don't know what that means, there is no other way than "pouring on head" (or "submerse in water" depending on which translator you ask). Grrrr… and so the argument simmered over low heat for months.

 

A year later, during our first consultant check, we were asked to consider solving the problem by simply borrowing the Amharic word t'imk'et, since that had been done in many other projects. The translators were equally unexcited about this option, but slightly satisfied since t'imk'et couldn't be argued to be "too common" of a word. The fact that it communicated absolutely nothing to Gmz speakers outside the church wasn't a big deal to them since baptism is a ritual unique to Christianity and can be taught as a new concept. After all, the English language didn't come up with its own term for baptism, but instead stole the Greek word baptizo. Ok, I thought, my role in this project is one of an advisor, not as a dictator. And so with that, they stated their slight preference toward t'imk'et (though clearly still disgruntled about not being able to highlight their particular church's mode of baptism) and I promptly made the changes throughout the book of Luke.

 

At that I thought the issue was closed, that is, until the very last time we brought the book of Luke before the review committee. Much to my surprise, one of the review committee members questioned the use of t'imk'et, hoping, it seemed, to re-open the topic of using datahalik'w, "pour on head". The three translators, however, having heard it from me like a broken record, successfully defended our stance of why we must avoid both datahalik'w and dalimok'w and moved the discussion back to the two options still on the table: the Amharic word t'imk'et or the Gmz phrase ma'efatsa alamakwaaeya nilaganasa (washing of repentance). I sat back and listened and after much conversation a vote was taken:

 

t'imk'et­ – 8 votes
ma'efatsa alamakwaaeya nilaganasa – 9 votes

 

Seeing that six of the eight votes for t'imk'et came from one denomination, the denominational support for the ma'efatsa alamakwaaeya nilaganasa was much more diverse and therefore the winner. And so, without making a single argument in that final decision, I was given the green light to make the changes I had proposed first proposed back in 2012. Changing key terms that are already well-rooted in people's minds can be very difficult, if not impossible. But for the sake of producing a Bible in the GMZ language which ALL denominations will use, it was worth the demanding process, whether it takes days, months and even years to satisfactorily complete.