This excerpt is from a journal entry from Jacob on March 14th. Prosper is the head translator for the Idatcha people.
“We woke up around 9:00 the next morning. Prosper said he would send someone to meet us here and he could bring us back to his office. We went outside and waited. While we were waiting we saw a couple ladies making food for the students and selling it to them. So we went over and had some sort of stew with gyrie I think it is like ground manioc or casava root. It was good. Then Prosper’s friend came and we went to the Wycliffe office. When we got there, Prosper gave us some millet sauce and some fried bread dough. The sauce/cereal reminded me of cream of wheat in texture, but different in taste. It was very good. Then Prosper introduced us to the translation team. There are four of them all together now. He explained how the process was working. They are just about finished with Mark and have drafts for 10 more books already. They have scheduled the first consultant check for May. They each take a book and translate it. Each morning they bring their work and distribute it to the others so they can read it together. This is when they make corrections and adjustments to it. The next step is to take it to a board of checkers made up of different church leaders and members. Many of these people have done some sort of translation work into Idatcha already. After they review it and correct it, they take it to the group of people – mostly women in the villages who only speak Idatcha and as they read it to them (most of them can’t read it on their own) they ask them if they understand it. If this checks out, then it is time to call the consultant and have him come to read the back translation. This person is from Wycliffe and likely an ex-pat doing translation checks. After they check it and approve, it goes to the printers and is published as whole books. When the whole bible is finished, they will publish it as the bible. But after one of the books is done, they will get as many pastors and church leaders together and train them how to read and how to teach it. Most of the pastors here among the Idatcha are not actually Idatcha themselves. They preach in French or Fon and it is translated at each service.
That is the process of Bible translation among the Idatcha. Daniel asked Prosper if all the men working on the translation were believers. He said there was one believer and two men from another type of church and himself. That surprised us and Daniel asked him why, if these men believed so differently then the evangelical community. Prosper said that the Bible is not only for the Evangelicals but for anyone who wanted to use it. So, if the these men want to use it (and they do) they would want to have a part in how it is translated. We thought there might be some difficulty with that if they were to translate things differently. Prosper said when they started, he told the group that this is God’s word and they will be translating it as close to the text as they could. They have had some very good discussion with these men because they didn’t really know what the Bible said. When they started translating Mark and discussed the idea that Jesus had siblings, they were not in agreement because their church taught that Mary was from God and she couldn’t have other children because she would have been a commoner instead of God’s holy mother. So these men thought they should translate the word “brother” for the word “cousin” instead. Prosper told them they would stick with the text. It says brother and that is the word it will be translated into. So, these men have found several things like that they didn’t know because only the priest reads the bible and interprets it for the congregation. God is doing a great work among the men who are working on the translation. “