Dear <<First Name>>,
The topic was "how to make sure your translation is natural." The teacher was one of the nine Nigerian Bible translation consultants who are teaching and facilitating this course on translation and discourse grammar. To demonstrate the effectiveness of a natural translation, he acted out how one man in a small village reacted while reading the gospel of Luke for the first time in his language. He jumped up and down, pounded himself on the head and exclaimed, "OOOOH! My language is good!"
Another consultant encouraged the group to persevere through the challenges of grammatical analysis:
"When I went to school and studied my own language, I learned so many things--things that were in my language, but I did not know their names. It is as if I am in a group of many people, and I do not know their names."
On the importance of not using "and" or "but" in your translation just because they appear in the English text:
"Sentence connectors are like salt in the soup. If there is no salt, the soup has no taste. If there is too much salt, the soup is spoiled."
And my favorite quote of the week:
"Your language is rich. Don't be an ungenerous translator. Use the richness of your language to make your translation beautiful!"
I am having the time of my life.
We are entering the final week of the course. The "ruler of this world" has been pushing back, with two participants losing close family members during this workshop, and several others who are down with malaria, Ishaya Benson among them. When I was preparing to lead devotions on Thursday (with the topic of spiritual warfare), my right eye turned completely red with a severe eye infection that cleared up as mysteriously as it came when my message was completed. Pray we finish well. We are working all this weekend to try to complete grammar and discourse write-ups before the end of the course on Friday.
So grateful to John, who is doing a great job keeping everything going at home!! Michael is doing great - we have fun playing peek-a-boo on Skype.
THANK YOU for your prayers for all of us!
Love,
Barb |
