Beyond Words: Where is John?

Not something we English speakers would expect, but time and time again, we bumped into the need to ask this question in our translation of John's Revelation – where is John in relation to this? Well, of course, he is seeing all of this in a vision, but what does that mean? Was he given 3D glasses to enhance the experience? Or, rather was John actually a part of the action at times? Indeed in chapter 10, there is one section when he is told to go, ask an angel, and then eat a scroll. So if John is a part of the action, where is he located as he is describing what he is seeing? Four options:

 

1. Outside of Everything (like watching a movie);

2. In Heaven (watching the events in Heaven unfold and the resulting effects down on earth)

3. On Earth (looking up in Heaven to see the throne room, but experiencing the effects all around him)

4. He is located in different places as he describes various scenes.

 

From my perspective, it seems as though John is describing most of the events as though he is in Heaven (option 2), however, there are certain passages which suggest other locations as well (option 4) For example, it is likely that the opening image of Rev 1 (Jesus among the lamp stands) did not occur in Heaven, given the first mention of seeing Heaven open in chapter 4:1. In addition, in chapter 21, as the New Jerusalem is descending from Heaven, it is said that an angel took John away in the Spirit to a huge mountain. So, recognizing that some other locations for John are mentioned, I would place John's default location as in the Heavenly throne room.

 

Who cares? Why does it matter? The Gmz language has what are called deictic markers, that is suffixes that we can put on the verb that indicate whether the action is happening either toward or away from the speaker. We have it a little bit in English in contrasting the words “come” versus “go”. In Gmz however, these suffixes can and often do occur on many, many verbs and so the question of “where is John?” becomes very relevant. For example, when the first trumpet sounded, when hail and fire mixed with blood was thrown to the earth, was John on earth seeing it come down, or in heaven watching it go down? We cannot be ambiguous in how we state that in Gmz, and therefore had many, many discussions arising out of disagreements as to where John was located in relation to the events being described.

Beyond Words: Colors

Let me begin with a new development on the previous post: Numbers. I was pretty confident on our translation of fractions, only to have that blown out of the water in yesterday's drafting of Hebrews chapter 7. In that chapter, we encountered a section on Abraham paying a tithe of 10% of his spoils to Melchizedek. In their drafting they didn't follow the pattern we had used only two months earlier in the book of Revelation, that is clue number one that our form wasn't working. Then, when I jogged their memory with the form “from 10 one part,” one translator said, “yea...but when you say it like that, it sounds like “one part” of ten would be one equal part, cut in half, and therefore one part of ten would be five.” Boom, back to square one on that one...welcome to our world of never-ending battles against certain difficult concepts.

On to this blog's topic: Colors. One of the fascinating things I remember from my Semantics class in Dallas was the study that has gone into how languages describe colors with a wide degree of specificity. This is exemplified in that some languages only have two basic words for colors, which could either be described as black and white or better dark and light. One step of specificity beyond the two-fold description are languages that add a third word for a color: most often red. A black, white and red language would have fit very well at describing the emblem of my high school – Sheboygan South. Languages which have four basic colors follow the black, white, red pattern, adding to those three a color referred to by linguists as grue (that is, the combination of green and blue). The fifth color to be added into a language is often either yellow or the distinction between green and blue. My study of the Gmz language very much confirms these patterns. In Gmz, we definitely have words for black, white, red and grue. Beyond these four, other colors can be derived and specified using comparison to something of that color. So for orange, they might say “like the tiny spicy pepper.” (Did you ever wonder why the color orange and the fruit orange are the same name? Likely the color derived from the fruit in this way).

As we worked our way through the book of Revelation, we encountered several colors along the way. We saw green grass in chapter 8, and then blue breastplates in chapter 9, but given that they are two different contexts and not contrasted with each other, it did not pose a problem for us to translate them with the same grue word that the Gmz language has to offer. We encountered yellow in chapter 9, which posed us no problems as it seems the language is currently in shift to use the name of a certain tree (whose pulp is very bright yellow) to refer to this color.

Later on, in chapter 17 and 18, we have three places where purple and scarlet are found contrastive of each other in the same text. After considerable conversation about different ways of describing purple in contrast to red, we came up with something that they all agreed upon – a word derived from the fruit of a particular tree. If this description passes the test of the review committee, we'll need to go back and change some earlier texts where we substituted red for purple (ie. the robe soldiers put on Jesus and Lydia the seller of purple cloth).

The first three horses of Revelation 6 were a breeze: white, red and black; however, the fourth horse brought considerable difficulty. Some might translate it pale, others grey, others light green – all of which symbolize death. We struggled and had to settle for a hung jury for the time being. That is, when the translators can't agree on something that isn't necessarily a matter of right and wrong, then we offer two, sometimes three options for the review committee to consider and decide. Such is the case with this color.

Lastly and probably the most difficult color for us to translate was clear or transparent. Part of the problem was that the Amharic used for this was a term that is most often used today for a certain type of glass used for drinking tea. And so, our most literal-oriented  translator insisted that the Gmz word for cup must be inserted into these texts – that is, totally missing the point of how “a drinking glass” was being used to describe the quality of being transparent. Three times we encountered “clear as crystal” and one time “like transparent glass” and each time it was a battle. In the end, however, in chapter 21, we discovered a nice phrase which we then copied back into previous references: “which inner-light-shined like glass bling bling” (the Gmz language loves ideophones).

So as you go throughout your day, try imagining categorizing and describing your world into just four colors: black, white, red, and grue. Then you'll have a bit of an idea of what we are up against in translating into the Gmz language. Sometimes, the concepts we need to communicate are truly beyond the words available to us...and yet we find a way.

 

Beyond Words: Numbers

Another area of difficulty in translating the book of Revelation was its use of numbers. Sure, we have seen plenty of numbers in the books we've translated thus far, and thankfully the government education bureau paved the way on many of those tough decisions. What do I mean? Well, if you were to travel through various dialects of the Gmz language you would quickly discover many different ways of counting. Well, I take that back, numbers 1 through 5 are common among all Gmz, likely because these are the numbers used most often in everyday society. Once you hit six however, differences emerge, often reflecting influence or even direct borrowing from neighboring language groups. Why is that? Because numbers are used in the marketplace where Gmz speakers come in contact with speakers of other languages. Therefore, especially when talking about money, non-Gmz numbers are used more frequently and thus adopted into the Gmz language. Another interesting option is what we had in Gesas where we first lived. They called numbers by the varying colors of the currency used here. So 100 was "green" and 10 was "red", so 150 would be "one green and five reds."

As I said, the government paved the way for us with regard to numbers, they did so  in two ways. First, they decided to adopt one particular dialect's set of 1-20, the one which showed no signs of borrowing and was agreed upon by several non-neighboring dialects. So although it is not the most common numbering system used in the town where we live, these numbers are accepted as "true Gmz" and therefore kids are now expected to learn them in school.

Second, the government decided to simplify the multiples of 10. Here is what I mean. The standard dialect whose numbers 1-20 were chosen has a very complicated system of counting based on the number 20. So the numbers are as follows:

Thirty is "20 on top of 10."

Forty is "Two 20s."

Fifty is "Two 20s on top of 10."

Sixty is "Three 20s."

Sixty-two is "Three 20s on top of 2."

One Hundred is "Five 20s."

When we first started translating, we began with Luke 15, the parable of the lost sheep. The shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep in the pasture and went to look for the one lost one. Ninety-nine, using this system based on 20s would be "Four 20s on top of 10 on top of 9" – more than a mouthful, and believe me, the Gmz are not genius mathematicians who understand this stuff without giving a second thought. But thankfully, the education bureau rescued us from it by inventing new words for multiples of 10 based on their single digit words, and also a new word for 100 and 1000. So now, we can say the number 99 in a much simplier and preferable way, "90 on top of 9." However, inventing words requires time for people to learn them, which means that only the young school-age children are learning them at this stage. Therefore, in our texts, we always, for every number greater than 5, write the Arabic symbol "99" followed by, in parentheses the government-approved words ("ninety on top of nine").

So all of this was fine as we cruised through all the numbers we encountered in the New Testament, that is until we arrive in Revelation. You see, the newly invented counting system seemed water tight, but the book of Revelation poked two gaping holes into it.

The first difficulty was with small numbers, that is fractions. The book of Revelation has a fourth of the earth, a third of the seas, a third of the creatures, a third of mankind, a third of the stars and a tenth of the city. Although the translators' first draft of these fractions was really long and quite a bit off course, we managed to bring it back in to something close to, but slightly more refined than what we had used to speak of tithing in Luke's Gospel. In short, the phrase we used consistently through these passages can be literally translated "from ___, one part." In other words, "from four, one part of the earth" or "from three, one part of the sea," etc. We'll see how the Review Committee reacts to this, but we expect it to pass, maybe even without much explanation.

The second, and by far the more serious hole poked in the government-approved numbering system is found in very large numbers. Sure, we don't have a word for million to cover the 200 million mounted troups in Rev 9:16, but that turned out to be no big deal – we simply said, "more than can be counted," with a footnote describing the 200 million number. The bigger problems came in chapters 7 and 14 in the number of those sealed from the tribes of Israel -12,000 from each tribe making a total of 144,000. Both of these terms do not work in the government-approved numbering system. Why? Because in the Gmz language, adjectives follow that which they modify. What does that have to do with anything? Well, we can use the recently invented word for "thousand," but since modifying adjectives will follow that means 2,000 is really "thousand two." Not problem, until you get to 11,000, which would read "thousand ten on top of one." Now what does that mean?

thousand (ten on top of one) = 1000 x (10 + 1) = 11,000

or

(thousand ten) on top of one = (1000 x 10) +1 = 10,001

The phrase is completely ambiguous and in fact there is no way to distinguish between without reverting back to the method employed by the base-20 system:

                thousand ten on top of thousand one = 1000 x 10 + 1000 x 1 = 11,000

Ok, that can work, but it is cumbersome, even more so when you use that system for the total sum of all those sealed in Revelation 7:

thousand hundred on top of thousand forty on top of thousand four = 1000 x 100 + 1000 x 40 + 1000 x 4 = 144,000.

I can't wait until the review committee on that one. If equipped with a calculator, pen and paper, and a full hour of time, I doubt many of them will come up with the right number.

In other words, something needs to be worked out and agreed upon by some sort of official language committee for the Gmz language. We hope to bring this problem (and a short list of other ones) to the attention of important people (like the language professor at the nearby college) and see if we can't together move toward a solution. But until then, this is one thorn still in our flesh after finishing our draft of the book of Revelation.

 

Beyond Words: Common Things Yet Without Words

Every morning, I've been trying to wake-up a bit earlier than usual to have a bit of time to read. The books of choice lately have been some causal reading of linguistics textbooks (I know you're shaking your heads at that incredible display of nerd-dom , but trust me there is a valid reason for it, that's just not the topic of this blog!).

Well, Thursday of this week I read a line which nailed one of the struggles we faced in translating the book of Revelation, it said something to the effect that Majority Languages of the world (like English) are often simple in their grammar (having been watered down over centuries of use in contact with other languages), yet they are extremely rich in their vocabulary (having stolen words from other languages along the way). That definitely makes sense for English. On the other hand, Minority Languages of the world are the opposite in both categories. They are complicated in their grammar and limited in their vocabulary. The second of these is particularly true of Gmz. The W-I-D-E range of meaning covered in some Gmz words has been no small thorn in my flesh. How can I wrestle though the minute variations of meaning found in different Greek words for “love”, when in Gmz we have only one choice, daafeesh, which also can mean “like,” “accept,” or “welcome.” Likewise, we have one word for the whole range of “ruler,” “king,” “authorities,” “boss,” “chief,” “commander,” and “wealthy person.”

So, as with the foreign materials post previous to this one, struggling with finding and modifying words to translate and describe normal everyday things is not new for us, but Revelation posed us the unique problem of piling up many such problems in each and every chapter!

For example, though we have tried many different ways, we cannot find a suitable way to refer to “a voice.” In the baptism and transfiguration texts, we encountered a voice coming from heaven, both of these we translated simply, “a word came from heaven,” and that seemed to work in those texts. However, in Revelation, there were voices coming from all over the place, and the sounds of the voices are compared to very strange things like “a voice like the sound of many waters,” “a voice like thunder” “a voice like a trumpet” and “like a lion's roar.”  Likewise we have no word for “sound” which we would have found quite helpful in a number of passages where John describes his vision in terms of what he heard. Grrr…in the end, we alternated between two phrases depending on if their voice was described to sound like an animal (in which we used a phrase which literally means “crying-mouth”) or if the voice was like that of a person (in which we used “word” as in the Gospels.)

Other examples include:

1) We don't have a word for “peoples” or “nations”, and so we used “crowds” and “lineages.”

2) We don't have a word for “right” as in “I will give him the right to eat from the tree of life” and so we had to leave it implied by saying “I will allow him to eat from the tree of life.”

3) Of course, seals placed on scrolls are a big deal in the book of Revelation, and of course, the Gmz people have nothing like it in their culture. And so we manufactured a phrase using the term for scar and modifying it to say the “pounded-scar” (with a footnote to go along with it).

4) Sadly, the Gmz culture has no words to communicate the concept of an inheritance. This may be due to the fact that their unfortunate funeral traditions which suck dry any and all remaining assets the deceased may have left behind (and then some). Yet, the Bible is full of promises of the inheritance that is ours in heaven and our role as co-heirs with Christ. Following many of the translation notes, we acknowledge that the metaphor of inheritance used by Scripture is not perfect in the sense that it is not something that we, the children, receive upon the death of our Father, God. Rather Biblical inheritance is better understood as God's “children” receiving the fulfillment of that which God promised, that is, the fulfillment of hope. And so that is how we have tried to translate around this concept in the absence of a nice clear term for inherit or heir.

5) In regard to building structures, Revelation challenged us a bit further, specifically when we needed to refer to the outer courts of the temple (which John was told not to measure). For that we translated “the land that is inside the fence of the temple.”

6) And even more difficult, we struggled with describing the foundations of the New Jerusalem's wall. We had seen foundations of buildings before and we weaseled our way around those fairly well by just describing the process of digging deep and planting the wall sticks deep into the soil. However, the wall of the New Jerusalem had 12 actual foundations, each decorated with jewels, and upon which were written the names of the apostles. We needed to rethink our strategy in this, eventually landing on – “the strengthening/supportive beginning of the walls.” It is yet to be seen how the review committee reacts to that. If it passes their test, we will need to search through previously translated passages and make the appropriate adjustments.

 

Beyond Words – Foreign Materials

One day, about three years ago, I was sitting on the side of the room overhearing a discussion among our review committee quickly heating up into an argument – translation of something that was totally foreign in Gmz culture. As is often the case with such terms, there is not a simple well-accepted Gmz word just sitting on our table for easy use. And, often times, it isn't a matter of searching harder and digging deeper to find that perfect word buried deep in their lexicon. At some point in our research, we need to accept that the perfect, ready-made translation simply doesn't exist. And so, as translators, we are forced to think beyond the words themselves, often following one of three ways to solve the problem:

1) We could choose a Gmz word that is close and hope that the context of Scripture expands the meaning of that word (such as what we did with our word for holy)

2) We could use a descriptive phrase in place of the word (such as what we did with Gentile – “people not of Jewish origin”)

3) We could borrow a word from another language (such as we did to avoid controversy in the word for baptism). (this option is by far the least desirable as described below)

Hearing that the conversation among the review committee was hitting a stalemate, I stood up, reached into my motorcycle jacket pocket and pulled out a tire gauge.

I showed it to the review committee and, after telling them what it was and what it was used for, I asked them what it was called in the Gmz language. Of course, I got nothing but blank stares and “Who knows?” expressions. I went on to remind them of the three options we have in communicating something totally foreign to our Gmz audience. How would those three play out in the tire gauge example?

Option #1: Choose a Gmz word that is close: maybe "stick", or "metal". That clearly was not going to get us far since a tire gauge is very far removed from their culture.

Option #2: Descriptive Phrase: "thing used for measuring air in the feet of a vehicle" or shorter, "air measurer."

Option #3: Borrow a term (modified to sound like Gmz): Taaira gezha – the problem with this option, is that it communicates absolutely nothing to a Gmz speaker, totally empty of meaning, we might as well call it a "rubber ducky", for that would be no less correct to them.

With something as foreign as a tire gauge, it was clear that option #2 was the best way forward, and most often we have found that to be the case with foreign object/ideas we have encountered in Scripture.

All that to say, in the 71% of the New Testament that we covered before arriving at John's Revelation, we encountered many, many foreign things and took pride in becoming quite good at skirting around them with descriptive phrases (only rarely resorting to the final option of borrowing terms from Amharic). In Revelation, however, we were challenged at a new level as we felt attacked not by a lone hungry hyena every now and then, but rather by a whole pack of hyenas all at once, of course, laughing at our feeble attempts at descriptive phrases. One category of particularly troublesome pests was the diverse materials used by John to describe his heavenly vision.  

METALS: We have a Gmz word for gold, so there is no problem there, silver we had encountered in previous NT books, where, after struggling for some time before we settled on borrowing the Amharic word birr (which unfortunately has the same name as today's local currency - Ethiopian's of old must have traded in silver….interesting).  Now in Revelation, we find not only gold and silver, but also bronze and iron. For iron, we opted to use the Gmz phrase for "strong metal", and bronze was translated as "red metal". Neither are ideal, but at least we avoided borrowing two more meaningless terms from Amharic.

ROCKS: If metals were a partial victory, rocks was a devastating loss. We stumbled through the throne room description of chapter four in which we encountered jasper, carnelian, emerald and crystal, none of which were known to the Gmz people. Beginning with jasper, we hoped to be able to describe it at least by color or shape, and so we turned to our translation notes for help and here is what we found: "There is no complete certainty about all the stones that appear in Revelation. The semiprecious jasper may be yellow, brown, red, or green; it is actually somewhat dull and opaque. Some commentators suggest that the writer had in mind an opal; others, a diamond. The same holds true for the carnelian…" Argh…so much for a descriptive phrase! We did a quick Google images search (which we often do with unknown objects), and up came such a variety, it was clear that we had no chance in translating this rock with anything other than a meaningless borrowed name Yaasp'ed. Not wanting to admit total defeat we included the phrase "expensive polished rock" prior to our cop-out borrowing "which is called jasper" and likewise for the others of chapter 4. However, in chapter 18, we found our one lone victory in the realm of rocks – marble. The Gmz DO have a word for marble because it is mined out of our region, loaded on trucks and taken who knows where. It almost felt too easy just to stick in one word and move on, but we welcomed the breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. If chapter 4 was a minor defeat, chapter 21, and the description of the New Jerusalem was the knockout punch as the city walls were made of our old friend jasper, the twelve foundations of the city wall were decorated with 12 different rocks, none of which we stood a chance at translating into anything meaningful to our Gmz audience. Jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl…the list of painful defeat seemed unending.

Scattered throughout the book of Revelation, and especially that difficult list in 18:12-13, we got nailed with many other foreign materials and other objects, some of which we were able to describe, at least in part. Here is a sample list:

pearls – "beautiful beads called pearl"

ivory - "elephants' teeth"

citron wood - "good-smelling wood"

linen – "beautiful thin cloth/clothes"

silk - "beautiful cloth/clothes made of something called silk"

cinnamon - "bark of a tree that smells nice"

frankincense - “good smelling thing called frankincense”

carriages – “vehicles pulled by horses”

bear – "wild animal called a bear"

sulfur – "stinky thing which is called sulfur"

winepress – "place of squeezing juice of grapes"

Milestone Day

I love days like today (written Dec 30^th). Although the morning routine is the same - read in bed before getting up, eat a quick breakfast, say goodbye to the family and walk across the dust field to the translation office – yet there is a noticeable spring in my step. Why? Because today was a milestone day. After plugging away on team checking the book of Revelation for 4 weeks now, all that remained for this morning was the final seven verses, on two of which I had no exegetical questions to ask. And believe me, finishing Revelation would feel good, better than I would have initially expected. You see, Revelation is supposed to be a relatively easy book to translate. Its author, John, writes in the easiest Greek of all the NT authors and although the concepts and images may be quite troublesome for pastors and teachers to interpret, their concrete, visual nature is actually quite straightforward in translation. At least that is what I've been telling people for years – unfortunately, I've since eaten those words. While we certainly did enjoy the break from Paul's difficult, run-on sentences, Peter's complicated, abstract thoughts, and the deep theology of John's Gospel, we instead encountered more than a few problems in trying to describe things that simply are not present in Gmz life experience.

 

At times, we felt very much like John who was given the impossible task of describing visions of heaven using only earth-bound conventions of human language. It is for this reason that the word “like” occurs in the English translation of Revelation 66 times, and the word “as” another 44 times. A voice like a trumpet, someone like a son of man, hair white like wool, as white as snow, eyes like blazing fire, feet like bronze, voice like the roar of rushing waters….all that in the span of just a few verses of chapter 1! Thus 110 uses of comparative words used by John as he struggles to relate totally foreign images to that which is within the realm of his experience and that of his readers. So also, as with John, we found ourselves struggling for words, even at times when we felt we had grasped that which John was striving toward, we lacked the language to adequately capture the thought. And so, thankful for having 5 years of translation under our belts, we continued our tried-and-true method of talking through hypothetical scenarios, “following paths worn by long-eared cottontails” and “chasing non-domesticated water-fowl”, all toying with language to see if we might stumble onto  a new expression.

 

And that we did, at times… And so, with the challenges of Revelation fresh in my mind, I invite you into the translation office in the next series of blogs entitled “Beyond Words”.

Let the Story Be Told

Really it's an argument from silence, but in a non-traditional sense. Some of you, though not as many as I would probably like to believe, have probably noticed a major decrease in new blog entries this past year, more specifically since May. In some ways, it has been a freeing feeling for me to take a break from blogging, put the computer away to focus on other more important things: ie. my family. Specifically, last May, while away from home at an international conference, I spent a lot of time processing where I spend my time and energy. I knew that Andrea needed me more than ever during this season in our lives, and together we lamented to see the trajectory that Micah was on toward discouragement and negativism against everything present in his life (his sisters, his mom, his schooling, his lack of English-speaking friends, etc). And so, at that conference, I made the conscious decision that blogging, among other things in life, would be pushed to the back-burner of my life, for the sake of intentional investment in my family.

 

Now this all sounds very noble and good, after all, what does a man gain if he records a lot of nice stories but loses his family? At the same time, there is something very sad about it as well. I write blogs for at least two reasons. The first being the reciprocal relationship that is formed through the blog, that is the joy of welcoming others into experiencing our story while at the same time feeling loved and appreciated by those who take the time to read it. This hits two things that are very important to me: 1) being heard and 2) helping partners in ministry feel like they are a part of it.

 

The second reason that I write blogs is that it helps me process through life. When I set my fingers tapping on the keyboard, they often lead my mind to conclusions that it otherwise doesn't want to go to. When I read and reread the story I've written, new truths and lessons pop out in meaningful ways. In a sense, it’s a journal, but at the same time a conversation with myself that keeps me focused on what's important and why I'm here. It is this second reason that kept me writing, even when I felt like the blog's readership had tapered off (based on the only thing I have to go on, comments back to me).

 

In the past seven/eight months as I have neglected the blog, I have seriously missed the positive outcomes of these two reasons. More than ever, I feel the vast ocean that separates us from our partners back in the US, and, though maybe not directly related to the blog, I wonder if our partners would say the same from their end. At the same time, my failure to process life through this written means has seemingly taken its toll on my ability to rejoice in our life and ministry. For the first time in the past eight years, I frequently find myself without a “story to tell,” that is, I no longer rejoice in the “Story of God's Faithfulness” to us (as the blog is titled). It is not that God is no longer faithful, nor that he isn't writing his exciting story all around us, rather it is that I am not pausing enough to reflect upon that story in ways that nourish my soul and fan my passion into flame. This resulting starvation of my passion toward God and ministry is, I believe the most detrimental consequence of my decision last May.

 

Now, don't hear me wrong, my relationship with God is not solely dependent upon whether or not I write blogs. However, it brings to light something our Wycliffe resource coordinator (and friend) helped us realize a while back: recognizing, meditating upon and writing down the story of God's faithfulness, may certainly be considered a spiritual discipline. And so, at the beginning of 2017, I declare with new enthusiasm, let the story be told. And just in time, as we have the feeling 2017 will be a year filled with many exciting new adventures! J