Moved By Light

Below is a listing of the travel that I have been doing or anticipating for the year.  It is exciting to help new projects start out in Peru and Curacao and help other projects finish in Guatemala and Argentina.

Jose Maria and Adelina finished the translation of the Bible into Pokomchí, a Mayan language from Guatemala.  I have always enjoyed working with them.  In the early years it was just Jose Maria.  He worked with pen and paper.  However, as the years went by his daughter started to work with him, at first just helping with the computer but as the years went by she became a very good translator herself.  They make a great team.

I always enjoy helping start new translation projects. A few weeks ago I was able to meet and train the new translators for the language Piaroa. I first flew to Caracas and then on to Puerto Ayacucho, along the Colombia – Venezuela border.

They are working on a revision of the New Testament. Why do a revision? One reason is that language changes. English is a very stable language that does not change much. Languages that have very little written tend to change more quickly and dynamically.

Well, I am excited too about the trip to Thailand, but will be getting there via the Netherlands on KLM. An event like this will draw people from around the world. The list of countries represented includes…. Australia and New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Benin, Gambia, Kenya, Netherlands, UK, Russia, Canada, USA, Bolivia. It will be great to work together these weeks. Progress will impact translation around the world.

Today I finished an important project. An experienced translator worked on a book that helps other “spanish speaking” translators better understand problems encountered in the process. This 200 page volume only covers issues found in the book of Ephesians. Words, phrases, and discourse that impact a translation are explained with possible solutions offered. More of these are planned to cover other books of the Bible, but it takes quite a bit of time and money for each volume, as well as a translator who understands the comlexities found in the text.

This is an example of the text from Ephesians 1.13 …

In November I was able to make many new friends while helping with a Bible publishing workshop. I was there to help with training, but also found myself learning a lot. Tam from Vietnam and Chitra from Nepal taught me much about non-roman scripts. Translations that were finished are now ready for publication.

Traveling the continents and working on Bible Translation projects around the globe seemed to be the theme for the year. There were many long flights in the past twelve months as I made six separate trips to South America, working with projects in Colombia, Guyana, Brazil, and Chile. Some translations like Nasa Yuwe in Colombia are just getting started and others like Romane in Chile are nearing completion. Africa was also a destination for me and Donna as we spent three weeks there helping with a translation conference held in Mombasa, Kenya. Over one hundred translators from around the world attended this conference. Then in November I was off to Indonesia and Thailand working on publishing projects in the Asia Pacific region. Checking and then publishing the Bible in languages like Thai, Khmer, and Nepali is a real challenge and I love it!

(Brad posting for Brian, who is in Bangkok for a couple weeks, teaching translation workers.)

The days are really full here and we have another meeting that will be starting soon, so better go. We are about to look the issues associated with Khmer. Every night we have been looking at various languages and the challenges in each. Really unbelievable the challenges.