Freedom is the visage of a laundry-chomping donkey

This is the last week of my #30daydietofpassion, and this week I would really love to focus on some stories from the field that highlight some interesting translation issues!  The more I learn about linguistics, Biblical exegesis, and  how the two must work together to "crack the code" of Bible translation in each individual culture, the more I understand what a sheer miracle it is each time a translation team completes the Scripture in a new language!

It used to take a missionary's lifetime to learn a people group's language, and to then begin and finish the long, hard work of discovering each best word and/or phrase to convey the meaning of each Bible passage. This time has been diminished a little in many places, due to the move of working with national translators and missionaries that I've mentioned before. However, this just means that teams of nationals and ex-pats are now working together to discover those words of life that impart the right theological meaning encapsulated in each verse.

Ivy's story below shows one such example of a phrase that eluded a translator for a long while, until an incident with a donkey brought the right words to light! Enjoy:

Excerpt from Ivy Cheeseman's article, published in InFocus 2010, Issue 4

The anatomy of the translation process and... cartoons?

One of the things I get asked a LOT is about what the process of Bible translation actually looks like! Years ago, I myself thought there was just this one large, all-encompassing role of "Bible Translator" that sort of did it all.. I hadn't been given a full glimpse into the HUGENESS of what needed to be done yet, and I hadn't thought critically about how necessary lots of checks and balances are in the process, so that we know that the end-product translation is accurate, clear and natural to the native-tongue speaker.

This video is today's PassionBite, and the best resource I've found for making this enormous task make a bit more sense!

November 3, 2008 - Thoughts on "lack" and a mall mishap :)

Tonight I walked into my house and felt overwhelmed. I had been shuffling in the mall, whose hallways and speakers have ALREADY been adorned with “Christmas”… the outward colors of it without any inward depth. I had to squinch my ears to tell if I really was hearing the instrumental song that I thought I was… but it became undeniably clear the moment I saw the most unhappy Santa I have ever seen. There was a photographer; enormous, red, shiny Christmas ornaments; rolls of carpet moving in various directions for lines that would wrap around and around.
But there were no lines; only a Santa who was more than likely musing about skeletons and pumpkins, and a Persian man that said I am going-k to change your li-fe today…this cream! We vill get all the pimps off your face, it will change your life. All the pimps. Yes, that’s what he said.

I returned home to my beautiful girls, but conversation quickly turned to the one that is part of my daily life right now: I seem to have been having long weeks of the same conversation, dropped by one person, continued with another in my life, taken on by several others, dwindled and taken up again by someone that has noticed the same thing my heart has. It began over dinner with my pastor’s family. We somehow got to speaking about men in their 20’s and 30’s, in and out of our church, and Pastor Tommy said we should pray. There is this struggle, this fight, this dropping away of the men I knew that were committed to Christ, and a dearth of ones that are freshly arriving to Him, heart in hands. So we spoke more of praying for the men that let commitment and the forward-fight dribble between their fingers’ grasp; for the boys that have no idea what being a man should look like, and for the women that haven’t seen an example of anything but settling for this.

Then Rachel un-paused a video-teaching they were about to watch and the first words out of the speaker’s mouth were about The Beginning, and he began by breaking down the name Elohim. Break to the only response to emotionally-charged-stimuli that I seem to currently have on tap—a spasmodic visceral reaction: I fled the room.

It felt involuntary, an instant response— I couldn’t stay. The man said Elohim, and jumped into parts of the word, the root, the meaning. And it hurt. Ache. Want. The feeling that my heart would gut itself if I listened just now, tied, I guess, to the study of words, and God, and Hebrew, and Greek. Then instant repulsion at the dramatic nature of those emotions (oy-ve!!), annoyance that the ache makes me hostile, anger that I don’t know what to do with my heart.

I think I’m just tired, but it ends up coming out as a garbled, toe-crunching “rawr”. I would so much rather embrace what I long for—or the waiting for it—and not rush out of the room because of something stinging and poignant. I just felt a little sad. And hated that it comes on the heels of others’ joy. It’s all the change again: my wonderful childhood best friend gets married in 6 days, and in moments of weakness it feeds into the questions of what I’ve screwed up that keeps me from having what God has given to others. What have I done or been that is so irreversible? I feel like I’ve been longing and seeking, and allowing necessary separation… and still ache, distance, faint mimicries of emptiness.
And none of this is fair questioning, and I know this. I hate feeling consumed with lack; lack that my spirit, without false filters and worldly schematics laid over it, knows is not there, or knows that the vessel part, the decaying, unlasting part of me insists on identifying…conjuring.

Bleh. There it is. But out where its sting, or shame at such emotions, can dissipate, and out where the seeming-truth of some of those statements can be illuminated, shown for the shadows they are.

And then replaced. Replaced by the truth of blessing. Blessing in the form of roommates that have been abundant sources of “laughter like breaking dishes”, wisdom, and commiseration. Blessing in the form of joy in welling-up moments spent in my car. Blessing in the view down the hill in the morning mist.
There are some beautiful events in the last few weeks that I need to come back and mention; sights and company that have made my heart burst!—only tonight the other feelings usurped my attention first, so here they sit. My apologies~ :)

Posted on 3 November 2008 at 10:53 PM Comments (1)

July 31, 2008 -- A [long overdue] monica update

31 July 2008
A [long overdue] monica update

Dearhearts, friends and family~
So… I know I’m off the appropriate time for “Christmas and what-I’m-doing-now letters” by about 7 months (or I’m 4 months early! Depending on how you look at it :), but this summer I found myself at my first huge pause in a very long time, and waves of love and missing people hit me as I finished something that felt difficult to me, and I found the largest emotion in me was an ache to reach out and say hello, and ask for prayer, and re-open my side of all these relationships that I haven’t poured into as I’d like to by default… Please know that I am sorry for my lack of communication, and that you have been thought of much in this lapsed time~ I began trying to write all of you in a little house on the Carolina shore… Erik and Mom and Dad were all able to take off work, and we escaped for a whole week, which has never happened, as far back as I can remember. It was beautiful to watch everyone decompress; some of the complexity of the last few years for my family sloughing off, puddling somewhere gracious. I cannot describe how great and poignant it was to have “guitar under the stars time” with my brother, and to have the time to read books just for me, while bathed in sunlight! Right before we left (vacation was in June), I received word that I am now, after two years of teaching High School, finally a “real” teacher :). The last time I wrote to some of you was after Berry and right before Ghana (oh, heart!)… So much has happened since, but I returned to Georgia after Africa and took an office job in the name of getting rid of my school debt so that returning to the mission field could come sooner. God’s plans for the time being were different for me though, and a challenge to my heart. Instead, through some bizarre orchestrations, I fell head-first into teaching English/Literature, mostly in the Special Ed. environment, at my old high school (!) and taking evening classes to get my teaching and Special Ed. certificates. The program allowed me to work in the capacity of a true teacher for two years with the understanding that I would complete all the classes and state tests by the end, and turn in a culminating “digital portfolio” with all kinds of proof that at the end of that, they could trust that I knew what I was doing. Oh the stories I could tell you! The education system here has been such an odd training ground, and these two years have run the gamut from kamikaze days of driving after 7-hours of teaching to my 5-hour certification class (3 days a week!), to teaching a literacy class for a group of 15-19 year olds that were identified as unable to read or write above a 3rd grade level… It was more than I could have been prepared for, but also more than I expected. And now I find the beginning of my third year is just about to begin. It’s funny how much excitement and how much reticence can exist together! In all this time I still find how true it is that a “hope deferred makes the heart grow sick” (“…but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life” Proverbs 13:12)! and though it has been an accomplishment, my longings are as they were, and I feel as convinced of my call to full-time missions as I was before. I do not know how God’s going to use what I’ve learned this way, but I find that in the “extra time” that I have this school year (since I won’t be taking classes for myself), I want to commit to plead for His vision and for guidance for all the parts of my heart finding their way out of ‘sickness’. Please, as part of myself, pray for clarity as I embark on this next year of teaching: that God would direct my use of time, my desire to proactively get out of debt, and my continued questions about and longings for training in Linguistics and Bible Exegesis… And now you have reached the end of my run-on sentences, as this may be the best I can do to summarize where I’ve been all this time. Know that I love you, and again, that I’m sorry for my tendency to get splotchy about staying in touch. There’s so much more I could say; so many more important chapters have been folded inside these few years for me, and so much I have learned about love and heartache, but I know this is long enough. I would love to hear from each of you, and to know what’s been going on in your lives. Truly. With all my heart, Monica

Posted on 31 July 2008 at 2:21 AM Comments (0)