March and April were particularly intense and varied months of work for me (David) and we didn’t manage to get a letter out to ask for prayer but were grateful to God for carrying us through. This is what we had:

1. a little work with Koro Ashɛ, 
2. some field/village sessions with Nyankpa and Koro Ashe/Wachi pastors and elders, 
3. technical support for translation students at TCNN, 
4. checking part of Romans in Gbari language, 
5. annual staff meetings with colleagues

February: Getting Ashɛ up to speed

I spent most of February intensively training/retraining the Ashɛ translators on the job as we continued to work on getting Luke’s gospel into decent shape for publication. Arams Zachariah, who has worked with us for 6 years, and new translator Anthony Isuindok travelled into the Jos office which made things easier for me. They came for a week then worked in the Ashɛ office for a week and came back. I wanted them to try some independent work but not to go too far without supervision. (Of course various funerals interrupted work.) 

We’ve worked on Luke for well over 5 years. You might wonder what on earth we are still doing; some Ashɛ people apparently do! Most of the right meaning is mostly in the right place but we’ve been going through checking less obvious aspects, like making sure new paragraphs begin in the right place and sound like new paragraphs. We’re trying to improve section headings so they are helpful and not a hindrance to reading the Bible well. We’re looking at the big picture of how we use certain words and phrases for ideas and themes that run through the whole Bible - foreign names, customs, God, angels, disciples, apostles, messengers, temple, etc. We’ve been trying to make our spelling more reliable too. This brought out a huge list of words which sound similar and could be written the same way, but where we want to keep the spelling different to ensure readers understand things well.

Often the most noticeable difference is the tone (or intonation), but Ashɛ people literate in English or Hausa aren’t familiar with any way of distinguishing tone in writing or even talking about it abstractly, so we have a challenge on our hands. We have 2 variations of ‘e’ and ‘o’ sounds, as well as vowels having two versions pronounced ‘through the nose’ or ‘through the mouth’. And of course some vowels in certain words may be longer than others and sometimes this is a very significant difference. Figuring out how to separate words most helpfully has also been quite a challenge, particularly as vowels very regularly get lost at the end of words. When we compare what’s in Luke to the other very rough drafts of Matthew, Mark and Acts, the difference is quite stark and I think the translators are appreciating why it’s profoundly unhelpful to rush ahead drafting translations of more books before we’ve mastered writing Ishɛ consistently and clearly.

It’s handy that Anthony is comfortable with computers, but he’s had lots of time outside of the Ashɛ area so is less confident with the normal patterns of the language. We could do with taking on a third translator to maximise this training time and build capacity.

Realising that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to meet up with them I asked Arams and Anthony to come in for 3 more days at the end of February along with new literacy coordinator Joash, so that we could make some more progress together. Please pray for them as they continue working on some literacy teaching materials and continuing checking through Luke’s gospel as we did together in February. God willing we will meet up again next week in Jos.

March and April: Students, Romans, Countrymen

March and April quickly became packed quite solidly with varied non-Ashɛ work. I joined my Canadian colleague Jono for a trip to his translation area some way into the Nyankpa countryside. Ten men and a couple of women gathered under a shady tree outside a church to help review the Nyankpa translation of Luke and to think through some tricky translation choices. That was tried some years ago without too much fruit but this time there seemed more momentum and the reviewers were sent away to work in pairs with audio recordings supplementing the printed drafts. (Many people find it a little intimidating trying to grapple with reading their language for the first time and so the audio recordings seem to help people focus on what is said and meant, not just how it looks.)

We pray the reviewers will embrace their work and that God will guide them to identify weaknesses and make helpful suggestions to improve the translation.

One exciting bonus was getting to meet up with Moses, the Ashɛ translator who stepped away from the translation work last year to concentrate on church ministry. I wanted to find out what the chances were of him returning to work with us and meeting up face to face was considerably more helpful than trying to talk on the phone. 

The next week I got to visit what we had been told was a pastors’ conference or seminar in a town called Kubacha. It wasn’t quite what we expected, but we were given a chance to talk about the translation work with Wachi and Ashɛ and to collect numbers of people who might be interested in reviewing these translations. 

We also had some fun (!) computer problem-solving getting TCNN students ready for their pioneering language fieldwork, we had some staff meetings together and I joined the Gbari translation team as they started checking Romans with my colleague Ben. I led them through checking Romans 9-10 a couple of weeks ago spent a lot of time immersing myself in preparation and then writing up my comments and suggestions for further improvement or research.

At home

Prayer - especially for the Ashɛ project