Tie your donkey to a grape vine? Wash your clothes in wine?

What would you think if someone suggested that you tie your donkey to the branch of a grape vine? That is, if you had a donkey and a grape vine nearby to tie him to.

I don’t know much about donkeys and grape vines, but my thought is that the branches of grape vines aren’t very strong, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to tie your donkey to one, as if he wanted to escape, he could probably pull and the branch would break off, or he would uproot the plant.

In his blessing for Judah, Jacob says: “He ties his foal to a grapevine, the colt of his donkey to a choice vine. He washes his clothes in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.” Gen 49:11 (NLT)

What does this mean? Why would you want to wash your clothes in red wine? Do we want our white shirts to have a red tinge to them?

I’ve been checking the Teop draft of Genesis 49 recently and I did some research on this verse. I learnt that tying a young donkey to a grape vine is not normally a good idea, but the reason isn’t because it might break the branch and run away – the reason is because it will eat the leaves and fruit.

What Jacob is saying here is that Judah’s land is going to be so fertile that grape vines will grow really well, and he won’t even worry about the fact that a young donkey might eat some, because he will have such an abundance of them.

The bit about washing clothes in wine is also referring to how wine will be plentiful. It will be so plentiful that you could use it like you could use water. Even if we were talking about white wine, you wouldn’t wash your clothes in it because it is expensive and you wouldn’t want to waste it like that. However Jacob is saying that wine is going be as abundant as water. He doesn’t mean that people will actually wash their clothes in it; rather he is using the image to illustrate how fertile the land will be.

I’ve tried to edit Genesis 49:11 in Teop so that the meaning of the verse is clear. If I didn’t, people wouldn’t understand the verse, it would just sound like nonsense. What’s the point of translating if the translation doesn’t communicate the intended meaning?

Computer in the village

These days technology is making more things available, and as I have mentioned before, we have a small netbook computer and solar panels for charging it, which means that our translation team can work on typing up and editing drafts while in the village. It is more convenient than having to travel to Buka to do it, so it is a great blessing.

Here’s a photo of Ailyne using the computer to edit a draft translation.

Advisor checking

This is a photo of our advisor checking session in August. Rebekah and I have our computers on to look at resources on the computer and the Teop translation is edited on the small netbook computer at the window.

We wanted to return the village as soon as possible, so we were working very full-on, including evenings and weekends, so that we could get though the chapters and go back to the village.

Village checking

In village checking, we get together with Teop speakers in the village and read through the translation to check that it makes sense and see if they have any suggestions for changes. The photos here show what village checking looks like.

Good discussions:

The changes were getting directly inputted into the solar-powered netbook as we did the village check.

Anuki dedication of Mark and Genesis 1-11

You may remember that in February I told you that I was working with the Anuki team at the VITAL course, helping them as they translated some of Acts. In previous courses, they had worked on Mark and portions of Genesis. They completed the whole checking process for Mark and Genesis 1-11, so it could then be published and distributed. They had a big day of celebration to dedicate and sell the books. Click on the title or copy and paste the link below into your web browser to read a news report about the special day. (The 'insert link' feature isn't working for me, so I have to do it this way).

http://theanukicountrypress.blogspot.com/2010/08/translating-bible-into-anuki-is-vital_02.html

Here’s a photo of me working with the Anuki team in February:

The Anuki Team

During the translation workshop in February, I was working with the Anuki language group. Each language group sends three people to the workshop, two who work on translating and one who works on producing literacy materials, such as books for children in their language. The team that the Anuki language sends in consists of translators, Kipling and Hazel, and the literacy worker Paulus. In the picture above you can see Kipling and Hazel working on translating a passage.

Paulus joined us to check through the passage – when I did the advisor checks, he joined us and I asked him questions about the passage since he hadn't worked on it and didn't know it so intimately. We are doing an advisor check in the picture below.

Nearly every night after dinner, I went back to work with the Anuki team to finish off the day's work and I was glad when we had the occasional day that we finished everything before dinner! The days we finished earlier were the days that we only had 12 verses to translate. Other days we were working on 15-19 verses.

At the end of the workshop, we had an evaluation, and the Anuki team said that when we translated only 12 verses in a day it was not enough! I tell you what – they are so dedicated that they are happy to translate more verses and working after dinner doesn't faze them! They're just incredible!

Kipling working hard in the picture above.

More of our translation process

Continuing from the last post, after they check the passage and make the changes, we put the text into a special program called Adapt-It and the translators tell the program which English words go with the words from their language.

I take the word for word translation and compare it with an English Bible to check that everything's there and how it should be, and I prepare some questions to ask in an advisor check later. The questions vary from comprehension questions, to checking out the deeper meaning of a particular word.

Each language group sends three people to the workshop, two to do translation, and one to prepare literacy materials. When it is time to do an advisor check on the passage, we ask the questions to the literacy person, since he/she hasn't worked on the passage and doesn't know it in depth like the translators. He/she doesn't necessarily know what it is supposed to say, so if there are problems with the passage, they may become apparent.

After the advisor check, we put any changes into the computer. Later we will print a booklet of everything they translated at this workshop and they language groups will take the booklets to the village and check them with the community, asking comprehension questions. Later on there will be another check with a person who is experienced in translation and has been trained to do final checks, known as 'consultant checks'.

Usually I work with the Anuki people until about 5pm and then we come back again after dinner and work for another hour or so. That helps us to keep up with the work. We get everything for that day finished so then we don't fall behind.

The daily work

I have been really busy during the week with the translation workshop. I wake up at 6am and have a cold shower, which I really don't like. All the staff meet together at 7.45am to pray and then at 8am, all the participants come.

We have devotions first and then a half hour training session, in which Rebekah is teaching about music and the church. In a couple of weeks the participants will be working on writing songs.

We have breakfast at 9am and dinner at 5.30pm and these are big meals. There is usually rice, stew, sweet potato, pumpkin, taro, bananas and leafy greens at these meals. At lunch time, it is a smaller meal, either some savoury cracker biscuits, or a cake.

After breakfast we start looking at the passage for the day, reading through it in a few different English translations and discussing things that could be issues. Then the groups start translating the passage and this takes several hours. Once they finish, we print their first draft out and they read through it to check that it sounds natural and they also check the accuracy of the translation and mark the paper with changes. Then they input the changes on the computer.

The work is not finished there though! There is still more work to be done on the passage and I'll write more about that in my next blog post.

How do we translate?

I could write an answer to this question that would fill a page, so I'll try to be brief.

There are different stages to translating, some of these are: first draft, advisor check, village check, back translation and consultant check. After each checking session, changes are made to the draft translation, until it is refined and as accurate as it can be. During this workshop I am involved in the first draft, advisor checks and back translation.

You might wonder how I can be involved in the first draft, when I don't know the language. Well, the two Taupota people do the actual translating. I typed for them (not easy when you don't know the language!) and I gave suggestions in English about different ways they could write it. I also explained things to them, such as the meaning of certain words or passages. They told me word for word in English what they had written in Taupota and sometimes I checked the meaning of the words or picked up on something that they hadn't included.

That's the main initial part of the translation process. I will try to write about the other parts another time.

Translation workshop

There are about 11 language groups that have come to the facilities at Hagita to participate in this translation workshop. Each language sends three people to the workshop – two of them to do translation work, and one to do literacy work. Each language has a mentor who advises and assists them.

I am working with the Taupota language. They live on the coast and can access Alotau by road. Most of the other language groups came to the workshop by boat.

During this 'module' the groups are translating Exodus 15-17, making adjustments to an information booklet about HIV-AIDS that they translated previously, and writing a fairly literal translation back into English of their Genesis translation.

Mashed or solid food?

Well I'm at Alotau now, helping a language group at a translation workshop and over the past couple of days we have been working on translating an information booklet about HIV/AIDS. My group came across something that could possibly be misunderstood if translated poorly. It was talking about taking babies off breast milk and starting them on solid food. 'Solid' was the word in question. One of the translators pointed out that we should really say 'mashed' food because people would think it meant that they should give babies something truly solid, like peanuts! Imagine the trouble we would be in if a translation that we endorsed resulted in a baby choking because they had been fed solid food and not mashed food. So you can see that it's really important to translate well and literal word for word replacements don't usually work well.

And here are some photos that are completely unrelated to this blog post, except that they were taken in Alotau:

TTC graduation and Teop visit

I arrived at Buka in time for the graduation from the Translation Training Course. Eight language groups attended this course and learnt about Biblical background, Hebrew, language, and translation. They also did some translation and will be taking it back to their villages for checking with the people.
 
The picture at the top shows all the students singing a song at the graduation. It was really amazing - they sang the song 10 times, in a different language each time - Tok Pisin, English and the eight languages of the students.
 
Tomorrow (Tuesday) I am going to visit the Teop language group and stay with them for a few days (I will have someone accompanying me too). I have met the people that will be looking after me as they were at the TTC, and they are lovely people and very excited about me coming to visit. I'm sure I'll have lots to tell you about the trip after I get back on the weekend.