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9/28/2010

Reading through Genesis in Nzime

Praise the Lord! The two leaders of the Nzime church we hoped to work with are now in Yaounde and we have finished 3 Days of reading and processing GENESIS! We have read and revised chapters 1-43, making lots of decisions about to say about some matters that are new to us, which do not occur in the New Testament (©The Bible League, 1998). I have finished the adaptation of the (checked) text of Genesis from Badwe'e to Nzime. The complete document will now be sent to the translation review committee when ready for them to read and check. These two church-leaders just said that what they need most next are the Psalms, and they want them ALL!

9/25/2010

The Budget for the St. Mark's Building Project

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Thanks for your concern.
The parish of Ngoyla lacks a safe and welcoming environment for the resident priest and for his parishioners when they need to come together.
They have an critically-important building project which includes a meeting-place for the church and a the parsonage.
This was proposed by the Priest of the Parish, Father Tarcisius Mpa, who can be contacted at peretarcisiusmpa@yahoo.fr. The Bishop in Doume-Abong Mbang, Jan Ozga, has approved it and authorizes this funding project. For more on this worthy project, see my post here.
If you are ready to help, a donation can be sent to the Reverend MPA through the Bishop.

9/19/2010

Do you want to help? Does your church look like this?

Here's a building project to help the Parish of Ngoyla!
The Roman Catholic priest of Ngoyla, Reverend Mpa Tarcicius, has received the full support of his bishop in Abong Mbang and Doume, and together they are asking all who are interested to consider helping him accomplish the task of building the chapel and the parsonage. These are very important if he is to reach out to the Njyem people.

















The chapel, shown above, is in seriously deteriorated condition.

















The parsonage, shown above, is done in the local manner. These houses are not of a standard that is durable or that provides real protection against insects, rodents and bats.

Why cannot the Njyem manage their own parish in Ngoyla with their own funds? Part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that they are virtually surrounded by a forest and wildlife preserve. Economic activity is severely reduced in such a place. Normally, that would include logging and trapping. A palliative proposed by some of the conservationists is "eco-tourism", but it turns out that there are very few westerners spending their vacations in the tropical rainforest of Ngoyla. It means in part that the people are really forced into a much lower standard of living.
Anyone wanting to help can contact me for details as to progress in fund-raising. My email is beavonkeith@yahoo.com. You may also pass on this information to others for their prayerful attention.

9/18/2010

New Leadership for the Njyem Language Committee

Last month Francois Medjo went by motorcycle 120 miles from Lomie to Ngoyla and back, one of the main places where the Njyem people, who speak a neighboring language, are located. Last year, we helped them to produce The Gospel of Mark and an order of worship for the Roman Catho­lic Church. After that, we noticed that there seemed to be little movement for­ward. They seemed at risk of losing in­ter­est in this project. Rufine Adjowa, a proud speaker of Njyem living outside of the area, re­quested that Francois pay the com­mu­nity a visit and see what could be done to restart the project. During his visit, he exhorted them about the need for ongoing programs of translation and literacy. They chose some new leaders for this project, in­clud­ing the schoolteacher, Mbi Aimé, and proposed a list of activities for the next three months. These include as­sembl­ing a collection of Njyem pro­verbs and revising a draft hymnbook. A meeting will be held in December to look at what has been accomp­lished. The Roman Catholic priest of Ngoyla, Rev. Mpa Tarcisius, has a big role in the Njyem language committee even though he does not speak their lan­guage yet. He wants to participate in all these activities in the interest of building a viable Bible translation committee. Although these people are mini­mally impacted by the Christian Gospel, several groups of the Njyem who also understand Nzime somewhat have been listening to recordings of the Nzime New Testament. Please pray for a powerful move­ment of God among the Njyem.

Parsing Genesis

In trying to get a high quality publishable text for Genesis in Badwe'e, Mary and I have been using a nifty program called Fieldworks Language Explorer. Produced by SIL programmers, it is now going into its seventh version. What we are doing with this program is called "parsing", which means analyzing every word in Genesis, to see that its spelling and meaning conform to a dictionary that we have been building up. This program is also helping us to prepare a document that can be adapted into other languages. At the same time, we are making a French back-translation that gives a reader of French a global view of the text and allows us to spot any parts of the message that might be missing. Here in Cameroon we receive help from our computer department in making good use of this program. Jenni Beadle and Matthew Lee are available to help us with this resource and teach us aspects of the program that are difficult. Please pray for these programmers and software trainers who "speak fluent Geek", as Matthew describes it, so that we can translate the Scriptures better into Badwe'e and other languages.

What Happens Next? The Adaptation of Genesis

We have helped the Badwe'e translators complete and test a translation of Genesis, and on Sept 20 it was finally checked and approved for publication. The exegetical consultant for this task was Patricia Wilkendorf, who says she never has enjoyed a checking assignment so much. The text will next be adapted into Nzime, where the Christian community is eagerly awaiting it. The interchurch committee has picked two community leaders for this task: Rev. Ernest Njyelo, a Presbyterian pastor, and Jean-Marie Koonzo', a lay leader in the Roman Catholic Church. Keith will support the adaptation process. Pray for us that this process of adaptation which will produce a first draft will go smoothly. The dates for this work are Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. It will be at the SIL center in Yaounde. We are using Adapt It, a program developed and supported by SIL. It is in use world-wide, and it has proven its worth many places, assisting bilinguals to produce first-drafts of a high quality from documents in related languages. Badwe'e is related to Nzime, and this makes Nzime a good candidate for receiving an adapted form of Genesis. When Genesis is adapted into Nzime, the texts in Nzime and Badwe'e will then be published at our expense and distributed among these two people-groups at a small fraction of the true cost. (They are economically very disadvantaged.)

The Gospel of Mark Being Broadcast

Almost three years ago we had a dramatic reading of Mark recorded in Badwe'e. At first these were distributed with Megavoice units to a limited audience. Now, however, these same recordings are being broadcast on a rural radio station in the Badwe'e area. They are widely listened to for 15 minutes every Sunday.

Translating the Word of God: Are you "STILL HIGH"?

When a translation is done, you study the meaning of the source lan­guage—Greek or Hebrew—and then you look for the lexical resources of the target language that convey the same meaning. It's never easy or boring. Often you come up with a good solution only to find a better one later. That is just what happened to us, by God's grace. A Hebrew expression, אֵינֶֽנּוּ, is trans­lated by “is no more”. It occurs three times in Genesis 42:13-36, referring to Joseph. It is a “softer” or euphemistic way of dealing with the subject of death. Elanga Ferdinand, president of the language committee, helped me understand a Badwe'e expression for this: nye aka be kʉ: “he is not high any­more.”Whatever meaning comes to mind when you hear this, for those seeing life through Badwe'e eyes, the words mean that the person in question is no longer above ground. He has been buried and is dead. That is the meaning of this euphemistic expression for them. That is what they understand when they hear that “Joseph is not high anymore.”

"Lamentably, regrettably or unfortunately"

If you have to convey to people the sorrow and disappointment underlying a situation, you must use the lexical resources that are language-appropriate.
In Hebrew, it would seem that the pathos ("sadness") of a situation was represented by repetition of the regrettable proposition that is being narrated. This is found at two places in the text of Genesis.
Gen. 11:30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. (English Standard Version)
Gen. 40:23 Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. (English Standard Version)
Parallelism is the distinguishing feature of Hebrew poetry, but is also found in narrative discourse, as shown above.
Given our sense that this structure is intended to convey to the Hebrew reader the pathos of the two situations, we look for the comparable expressions in Badwe'e and in Nzime. It turns out that the Nzime have a word, Nzamedwɛha, that lexicalizes the expression "regrettably; unfortunately" whereas the Badwe'e, a closely-related language, have a phrase (A vwa' e) that has the same effect. It can be translated "how lamentable with (or 'for')". They come across very differently when seen side-by-side!

9/08/2010

Getting the Meaning Across

In Badwe'e GENESIS, there is an interesting place where an accent rightly-placed will make the difference between Threshing Floor and Threshing Bed. The words for "area designated for use in..." and "bed" are duo (pitches: Low, Low) "bed" class 7 in sg. and class 8 in pl. and duo (pitches: Low, Low-falling) "area designated for use in" class 7 in sg. and class 8 in pl. To make the point that Joseph stopped at Atad's Threshing Floor rather than Atad's Threshing Bed, we add a "grave(Fr.)" accent on the "o" of duò. Now we have to record it and publish it for the Badwe'e people to hear and read. Pray for the funds lacking as we move toward these goals.

9/03/2010

GENESIS in Badwe'e: Checked and Ready for Publication

Patricia Wilkendorf has checked the Badwe'e translation of GENESIS. The work is now ready for the first of an unknown number of adaptations into related, Bantu languages. Everyone wants to preach and hear the Word of God about the great beginnings of the cosmos and of God's redeemed community.

The Swo Consonantal System

The Swo consonantal system has taken shape in my thinking and we are now ready to launch the experimental orthography. Pastor Simon Pierre Ossimba is a great support for this work and is very appreciative. Mr. Lounga Nang began working with me Oct.14 on a write-up of the phonology. We are hoping to finish the data collection on Oct.22. I have many of the conclusions already. After some more data-collection, I'll be ready for the formal write-up. After the write-up, we will begin preparing pedagogical materials and texts of various genres in the language. There are three degrees of consonants: Labial: /p/, /b/, /m/, /w/ Labiodental: /f/, /v/ Alveolar: /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /l/, /n/, /y/ Velar: /k/, /g/, /ŋ/. Allophones of these phonemes include: /K/-> [ʔ] / -CV_(V) /ŋ/-> [ɲ] / -_V /D/-> [r] / -CV_(V) /t/-> [ts] / -_V[high]

What the Lord is Doing in Lomie

Fifty Proclaimers with the Nzime New Testament have gone out to Lomie. Francois Medjo will deliver them and create new listening groups in response to the guidance of the Christian leaders in the area. Roman Catholic priests and Protestant pastors alike are looking at this tool as a major means of breaking through to the soul of the Nzime people with the Good News ("Gospel" in old English) of Jesus Christ. Pray for many miles of safe driving for Francois on his motorcycle.