Looking out

I had been in Africa for only three years, so I was still on a very steep learning curve. Not only did we not know Africa, we did not really yet know that much about Bible translation. We did not expect that one of our biggest learning experiences was about to happen and we certainly did not expect the lesson it would bring.

One of the missionary translators in the same country was finishing the New Testament translation. He had obviously been there a lot longer than we had, so we were impressed. And there was a lot to be impressed about. The man had done some impressive linguistics work. He had co-authored a course to teach the language at the university and the course textbook had been published. He had also authored several linguistics articles about the language.

Wonderful stories of God’s provision,
support and even rescue

So when he brought his family to the headquarters with the completed New Testament text, there was a big celebration. I remember listening to the wonderful stories he and his wife told of God’s provision, support and even rescue from difficult circumstances. The latter included a story of how God helped them when one of their children had a heart-wrenching injury in an accident. They told of the final push to complete the New Testament in time for their children to start school in their home country for the next school year. Their oldest children needed schooling options which were not available on the field. Obstacles which seemed unmovable such as illnesses and staff leaving the project had melted away before them. We were all enthralled and thrilled.

The family then went off on furlough. In fact, they had left the country for good because the schooling issue. The manuscript of the New Testament went to the printers. That in itself as a lot of work because this was in the days before computers.

We rushed down the stairs

We followed the progress of the printing of the New Testament with great anticipation. We knew that the shipment of New Testaments had arrived in the port. We hired a company to do the importation paperwork and deliver them. We were in a daytime prayer meeting on the roof of the office building when someone came busting out of the stairwell with the news that a truck with the New Testaments had arrived. We all rushed to the edge of the roof to see a flatbed truck covered with boxes three floors below. Well, that was the end of the prayer meeting. We rushed down the stairs, tore open one of the boxes and passed the contents around so that we could all hold in our own hands those books representing so many hours of labor, so many difficulties overcome and holding so much promise for a people previously without God’s Word. This is why we got involved in Bible translation, so that other people could be blessed by God’s Word the way it had blessed us. We were brimming with giddy anticipation of the blessings the message in these books would give.

A letter (yes a letter, not an email!) had come from the translator asking about arrangements for the dedication of the New Testament. I don’t know what I was expecting because it came as a surprise to me. I had never been to or even around a dedication before, so what did I know? Anyway, we took off in a vehicle up-country to work with the churches on the organization of the dedication. The language was large by African standards. There were over 350,000 speakers. The area had been evangelized for some time. Many of the speakers of the language were Christians and the many churches were full on Sundays. So it was not hard to get into contact with church leaders and talk about the dedication of the New Testament in their language.

We met a strange response.
No one seemed very interested.

But we met a strange response. No one seemed very interested in the New Testaments. The churches and church leaders did not volunteer any help in organizing the dedication. I kept thinking that they were just being modest and reserved, or that there was some cultural “thing” that I did not understand. We were being stonewalled. We eventually found a missionary who would organize the dedication in one of the main towns in the area. She secured the use of a large missions compound to host the ceremony. I was full of questions. I wondered what was happening. But I was the newcomer and so I just watched and did what I could.

The missionary translator returned to the country for the dedication. In fact, he played a major role in the dedication ceremony. It was very well done. A hilarious skit extolled the virtues of reading the language. In it, a group of school girls is told to go by the post office on their way home from school and pick up a letter for their father. They assumed that the letter would be in French and that they would be asked to read it to their father, who had never been to school. So they opened it while walking home. But they could not read it because it was in their language. They were shocked. Arriving home they gave the letter to their father who read it silently while they watched, giggling and commenting from time to time, driving their curiosity higher and higher. No one present had seen such a thing, so it made quite an impression.

The translator gave the main message — in the local language with an interpreter translating into French. This as the opposite of what happened most of the time in church. Either the sermon would be only in French, or in French translated into the language. People were commenting about that in the audience. To ice the cake, the translator spoke without notes for about 40 minutes. The mother-tongue speakers of the language next to me kept saying in French, “He really knows the language!”. From their reactions to some of what was said you could see that he was speaking powerfully.

I had started to learn a African language. Like this language a few years ago, it too had no alphabet, no dictionary, and no books to explain the grammar. Instead, I had to discover all that while learning the language. It was tough. I was often discouraged. Sitting in that dedication, I was so impressed with the hard work this missionary translator had put into learning this language so well. But other aspects of the dedication were troubling. Only a few hundred people showed up out of the hundreds of thousands who spoke the language, many of whom were Christians. There were no church leaders present and none spoke at the dedication. None had endorsed the translation either. Only a few New Testaments were sold and most of them were sold to missionaries and others as souvenirs. I saw one man, an educated speaker of the language, pick up one of the New Testaments open it briefly, then throw it back on the table saying “No one can read that!”

I was even starting to wonder if
this translation had been a waste!

Back in the office after the dedication, we had another prayer meeting at which the translator told more stories of God’s assistance and provision. He was full of joy. He left a few days later for his home country.

I was unhappy with what I was experiencing. There was a gulf between the joy, sense of self-fulfillment, linguistic accomplishments, and stories of God’s direction coming from the missionary translator and the lack of interest in the translation among the people it was supposed to bless. I was getting irritated at the sense of joy and fulfillment in the translator. Surely we needed to measure the success of this translation in wider terms than that. I was even starting to wonder if this translation had been a waste!

In the months after the dedication, the New Testaments did not sell. They were stored in the language area and available, but no one was buying them. We stared trying to find out why. We even assigned a missionary translator couple to do literacy and boost sales. They had very modest success and moved on to another assignment after a couple of years.

Through their efforts and by talking to church leaders we began to understand the situations. Among the facts we discovered:

• The missionary translator had started the translation in a looked-down-on dialect of the language. It was as like having a translation of the Bible into a hillbilly dialect of English. It just did not sound right to the people. Local pastors came to the missionary translator asking that the translation be done in a different and more acceptable dialect. Changing the dialect would have brought major delays and costs. It would mean moving the place where the translation was being done and choosing different local translators. The translator had just built a house for his family and did not want to see that investment wasted. So the missionary translator told the pastors that things would stay as they were.
• The missionary translator family had a personal deadline to meet. They wanted to finish the New Testament by a certain date. At that date, their oldest child would reach a place in his schooling where there would no longer be good options available where they were. So they wanted to go home just before then to put their children into schooling in their home country. When church leaders requested changes, the family realized that they would take time and push the completion of the New Testament past the schooling deadline, and so they were rejected.

This was an unexpected
and difficult discovery

The pattern that emerged was that of the personal and family needs of the missionary translator taking precedence over the concerns of local pastors. At first I thought that the local pastors were being picky. But then I thought about how I would react if a foreigner came to my country, started a Christian ministry in my home area and then made most of his decisions to suit himself and his family’s needs.

This was an unexpected and difficult discovery for me. I could have given up and gone home. But, instead of discouraging me, they drove me to find solutions so that other translation efforts would not go so unrewarded. But that has not been easy. More than missionary translators want to admit, the decisions they make revolve around what is good for them.

Looking in

I am not against the needs and preferences of missionary translators being taken into consideration. On the contrary, they must be part of decision-making processes. I am against:

• The organization I work for not recognizing the role the personal preferences have played and continue to play in translation programs
• Giving those personal preferences the predominant role that they have quite often had in the past and continue to have in translations run by missionary translators

I began to peer into my own heart and see how easily I made decisions based on what was good for me. That contrasted sharply with:

• What Jesus did, laying down his life for us
• The second most important commandment that we love our neighbors as ourselves
• The statements the Apostle Paul makes about his own ministry and the things he suffered for the sake of those to whom he was ministering

I needed a strong personal spiritual life and a commitment ministering with a focus outside myself or I would fall into the same trap. This is especially true because the translation enterprise is often governed by the missionaries which tends to reinforce making personal considerations paramount. The very organizational structures within which I was working tended to drag me away from my ideals.

In later years I saw many examples of missionary translators making choices predominantly to solve their own problems and thus limiting and in rare cases eliminating their impact.