The numbers are impressive indeed: The Bible, in whole and in part, has been translated into approximately 2,300 languages or dialects, with at least that many remaining. Equally impressive are press accounts of some of the individuals involved in this worldwide enterprise.
Take, for example, Pat and Claude Sharpe, who met—and married—as part of a translation team in Panama, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina. From 1979 to 2005, they headed up efforts to render the New Testament into Gullah, a Creole language still spoken or understood by several hundred thousand residents of the sea islands off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia. Titled De Nyew Testament, this was clearly a labor of love for all those involved. For those who want to know, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11) comes across in Gullah as: “Gii we de food wa we need//dis day ya an ebry day.”
Further to the north, The Gazette in Montreal reports that the Canadian Bible Society anticipates four more years of labor until the completion of the Bible in the Mohawk language. As of mid-June 2006, Proverbs was the latest Old Testament book to be completed in a process that combines old and new technologies: “First, some members translate a book from the Bible into Mohawk, and then other members translate it back into English so it can be double-checked for meaning by Bible scholars. At the same time, the group also is producing CD and audio tape versions.” It was also observed by The Brantford Expositor that the earliest Mohawk Biblical translation—of the Gospel of John—was produced way back in 1804.
Politics often plays some role in Bible translating. This has been true for no one more than Mary Jank, who was featured in The Owen Sound Sun Times when she recently visited her family in Owen Sound, Ontario. Born and raised in Canada, she has been working for over a decade on the translation of the New Testament “into a native Yanowama dialect used in the remote Parima Mountains in the southern part of [Venezuela].” The group with which she has been affiliated, New Tribes Mission, has been ordered out of the area by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who has “accused them of spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and of exploiting indigenous communities.”Notwithstanding, Jank and her collaborators push on toward publication in 2007 after “a series of checks by native Yanowama speakers who were not involved in the initial translation.”
Papua New Guinea, with more than 800 languages, has experienced more than its share of unrest. We learn from the PNG Post-Courier that one of the victims of the Bougainville crisis of the late 1980s and 1990s was “Bible translator, Mark Sipaara, whose ten years of translation work in his Nagovis language was wiped out during the crisis.” Only his version of Mark—in a language that has approximately 5,000 speakers—survived, since it had already been published.
Finally we turn to Pukapuka, a Pacific island that is described by PacNews as “off the main Rarotonga Island in Cook Island.” (Further exploration—admittedly of the arm chair variety—reveals that 715 miles separate these islands!) Dr. Mary Salisbury, whose Ph.D. thesis is titled “A Grammar of Pukapukan,” is much involved in the project of completing a Pukapukan New Testament in 2007, “in time for the 150th anniversary of the gospel arriving in Pukapuka.”
Readers of my previous columns will detect here little of the tongue-in-cheek for which I usually strive. For that, I offer no apology. Sometimes the unvarnished, unalloyed word is best when describing the Word.
The numbers are impressive indeed: The Bible, in whole and in part, has been translated into approximately 2,300 languages or dialects, with at least that many remaining. Equally impressive are press accounts of some of the individuals involved in this worldwide enterprise. Take, for example, Pat and Claude Sharpe, who met—and married—as part of a translation team in Panama, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina. From 1979 to 2005, they headed up efforts to render the New Testament into Gullah, a Creole language still spoken or understood by several hundred thousand residents of the sea […]
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