A lot more than words

Have you ever learned a foreign language?

Other folks sure have a strange way of talking, don’t they? Not only do they use completely different words, but often they string them together in a far different way. It’s a wonder any of them can understand each other.

I am, of course, just kidding. But I’m doing it to make a point.

If you’re going to create Bible lessons and Scripture translations that make sense in another language, you have to know far more than the words the people use.

Even knowing how they string those words together in a sentence won’t get you there.

You need to know how words and sentences work together in stories and conversation. You need to find out if some stories are told differently from others. For instance, you might tell a parable or a fable one way, while using an entirely different form to talk about your trip to the market yesterday. And relating facts in a conversation may take an entirely different form.

There’s a lot more, too, and that’s why Liv Poulsen had to finish up what is called a discourse analysis paper before she could continue translating the Bible into the language of the Badyaranke people of Senegal.

“Since I came back [from home assignment] I have also been working on some corrections that needed to be done in the discourse analysis paper,” Liv wrote. “Now I am continuing in Bible translation.”

Meanwhile, Eric Stottlemyer, one of her co-workers, has begun to write evangelistic Bible lessons in Badyaranke.

The next key step is finding the right Badyarankes to help Liv with translation and Eric with writing lessons. “We need people that are reliable and who faithfully will make corrections where they are needed,” Liv wrote. It’s not unusual for people to not want to correct anything, out of respect for the missionaries. But that’s exactly what is needed — after all, the Badyarankes are the experts in their language.