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.
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