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.