WWII memorials at Sohano, Bougainville

Today Rebekah and I went to Sohano Island, which sits in the Buka Passage, that is the small bit of ocean between Bougainville and Buka Island. There are some war memorials at Sohano and I visited them on your behalf.
 
The Australian memorial was a bit off the beaten track! It wasn't very far, but the path to it was almost non-existent and we ended up with lots of prickly burrs in our clothes for our effort! The first 3 photos above are of this memorial. I think the words are pretty clear on the first picture, but the second one is a bit harder to see – it says: In memory of the service given by the coast watchers and the loyal natives who assisted them 1939-1945.
 
The Japanese war memorial was more prominent and we just walked on nice short grass to get to it. It is in the 4^th picture above. You can see it from the sea when you are travelling on a motor boat as it is at the top of a hill at a point on the island.
 
The final photo is of a shell of a plane that crashed at Sohano. What I wonder is, did the plane crash at that exact spot, or was it moved to this more prominent position?
 
We also went snorkelling and it was great when you were in the midst of a whole school of fish, loads of them surrounding you. Those were rather unspectacular fish, but we also saw the nice brightly coloured ones too. No photos of the snorkelling as we don't have waterproof cameras!
 
I took a lot of photos of the views from the island, so I will put them up in a blog post in a few days.

Preparing to go to Bougainville

It's less than a week now till we go to Bougainville! Rebekah and I have been doing a bit of research on the Teop language. We found some wordlists in both Teop and the neighbouring language (Tinputz) and its dialects. It has been useful to have a look at those lists and compare the words to see similarities and differences.

One of the things we want to do when we visit the Teop area is to try to understand the dialect situation a bit more, so that we (or other potential teams) can know what is needed in terms of translation. For example, would a translation in the main coastal dialect be acceptable and useful for people who speak the dialects in the mountains, or would they need a separate translation?

We are hoping to visit several villages and dialects and we plan to write down lists of words in each place and compare them later. We will also ask questions about the language – its use, and how much people can understand the other dialects.

Meal lists

One of the nice things about Ukarumpa is that when you've been away for a while, they put up a meal list for you at the Post Office. What I mean by that is, there is a pinboard at the Post Office, where they put up a piece of paper with your name on it and the dates of the first three days that you'll be in Ukarumpa. Next to each date there are two columns, one for lunch and one for dinner, and people can write their name in a slot and sign up to have you over for lunch or dinner.

It is nice when you arrive in Ukarumpa not to have to worry about cooking meals straight away, especially when you're a new arrival like I was in December 2008 when I arrived from Madang to Ukarumpa.

I had a meal list when I returned from Alotau last week, and people had signed up for all three evening meals (didn't get any offers for lunches though!). I enjoy having meal lists as it is an opportunity to get to know people a bit better. Quite often I will sign up to have somebody over for a meal too.

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.

Today's exciting adventure!

We had a busy adventurous day today. First we hiked to a nice waterfall and then we went to a beach and went snorkelling. There is an Australian family (all adults) on holiday staying in the same unit as we are staying in on the weekends and they had the plans to do this trip and invited us to join them.

We drove to a place where we would start hiking to the waterfall. We had three local men who volunteered to be our guides. It was quite the hike! Lots of slippery rocks and tree roots. We were all so hot from hiking uphill. I wonder how this hike we did today compares with the Kokoda Trail – a lot shorter obviously, but in terms of difficulty, I'm sure it must be up there with it!

Here's a photo of us at a pretty easy part of the hike.

We were all very hot from hiking uphill so it was a relief to get to the amazing waterfall at the end of it and have a swim in the cool water.

After that we drove for an hour or so and went snorkelling at a place called East Cape and I saw lots of pretty fish. We saw a sailing canoe that had a blue tarp as its sail!

Here we are on a pier at another place.

It was a good, fun day, although now I have sore muscles from the hiking!

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.