Mango Spiders

We have mango trees in our backyard!

We love to eat mangoes raw for breakfast or maybe for a treat after supper.
Jeannette made a yummy mango crisp and a yummy fruit salad (fresh pineapple, fresh banana, fresh mango) and a yogurt mango smoothie.

But watch out for the mango spiders!

They only come out when the mangoes ripen. The mango trees are filled with intricate web labyrinths. How many spiders can you count? (and just think about how many you can't see)

Here's a nice close-up shot.

Yes, they could carry our children away.......but the mangoes are really yummy!

Translating Jita Jonah (part 2)

Jita translators: Magoma and Magesa and Translation Advisor: Ben

This is step 2 in translating the book of Jonah into the Jita language...

TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING

After the Jita translators adapt the text of Jonah from Swahili to Jita, I study the text and refer to my resources to make sure that the meaning of the Jita is consistent with the meaning of the original Hebrew. In my role as Translation Advisor I work with the translation team to make sure that the meaning of God's Word is communicated clearly, accurately, and naturally in Jita.

Here's a sample of the things we discussed...

In Jonah 1:3, the first draft sounded like the sailors were helping Jonah run away from God.  “Jonah paid his fare and got on the boat together with the sailors and they began their safari to go to Tarshish so that Jonah could run from God.”  We changed it to say, “Jonah paid his fare and got on the boat together with the sailors to go with them to Tarshish so that he could run from God.”

In Jonah 1:4, "the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea." The word "hurled" is repeated again in verse 5 when the sailors hurled the extra cargo into the sea. In verse 12 Jonah tells the sailors to hurl him into the sea and then in verse 15 the sailors actually hurled him into the sea. The first draft of Jita Jonah 1:4 sounded like "God brought very much wind." Not very colorful or vivid. I thought it would be cool to use the same word in every occurrence for emphasis. However, when I suggested this to the team, they said for God to hurl a storm onto the sea would make God sound like a malicious killer. Oops! Instead, we settled on a phrase like, "the LORD released an extremely fierce wind on the sea."

In Jonah 1:11, the sailors ask Jonah, "What should we do to you so that the sea will be calm?" In the first draft, the Jita did not include the little phrase "to you." Just two little letters were missing in Jita: [chikore] but it should have been [chikukore].

In chapter 2 we worked very hard to preserve the beautiful Hebrew parallelism.
Jonah 2:2,
{first draft}
"In my distress I prayed to the LORD,
and you answered me by helping me.
I cried to you, that you would help me,
and you saved me from Sheol."

{revision}
"In my distress I cried to the LORD,
and he answered me.
In Sheol I prayed to you LORD,
and you heard my prayer."

In Jonah 4:9, God asks Jonah if Jonah has a right to be angry about the plant. The first draft of the Jita said "I do well to be angry because I want to die." However, Jonah is not giving the reason for his anger, rather he is describing the intensity of his anger. Therefore, we changed it to say, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.”

And the list goes on, we spent a couple weeks pouring over every paragraph and every verse and every word and every letter. And we weren't only looking for theological/exegetical issues. We also found information that had been added unnecessarily, or removed accidentally. We found spelling errors and punctuation mistakes. We thought about the flow of the narrative as discourse. We looked at the tenses of verbs and the classes of nouns. Everyday we prayed that God would lead us and guide us to love his Word and communicate the meaning accurately, clearly and naturally.

In the end, we thought we produced a good draft of the book of Jonah....but then came the next step...

Stay tuned......

Translating Jita Jonah (part 1)

Jita translators: Neema, Magoma, Magesa and Translation Advisor: Ben

Now that we finished translating the book of Jonah into the Jita language, I thought I would show you the steps involved.  It should be simple, right?  Just 4 little chapters and 48 little verses....piece of cake, right?

Here's the first step in translating the book of Jonah into the Jita language:

DRAFTING

The three Jita translators (Magesa, Magoma and Neema) used a software program called Paratext to translate the book of Jonah from various Swahili versions into Jita (don't worry, you'll see in later steps that the Translation Advisor and Translation Consultant refer to the original Greek and Hebrew to ensure accuracy). Paratext was designed by the geniuses at SIL International and the United Bible Societies. (You guys are awesome!) Here's a screen shot of Paratext...

The translators look at the three major Swahili Bible versions and decide which way would be most natural in Jita. Then they make a back-translation, which means translating the Jita back into Swahili for the benefit of advisors (like me!) and consultants.

Translating the Bible from Swahili into Jita is not as simple as you might imagine. For example, the Jita language has three past tenses:

  Distant past is a long time ago until the day before yesterday
  Past is yesterday
  Near past is this morning

And Jita also uses a narrative "tense" when describing consecutive events in the past.

This is a challenge when translating Jonah 4:10, "The LORD said, 'You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.'"

How many days ago did the plant grow? How many days ago did the plant die? Which past tense should they use?

Jita also has various future tenses:
  the speaker has certainty that something will happen later today
  the speaker has some hesitation that something will happen later today
  the speaker has certainty that something will happen tomorrow
  the speaker has certainty that something will happen the day after tomorrow

This is a challenge in Jonah 2:9 during Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish, "I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the LORD alone."

When does Jonah think he will get out of the fish? Does he have certainty about when he will get out? Which tense should be used?

Please pray for the Jita translators as they carefully translate God's Word into their heart language.


{HUGE DISCLAIMER!!!}
Step 1 of the translation process is ONLY possible after Jita translators have been hired, trained in computer skills, trained in using Paratext, and trained in translation principles. Also, the Linguistics Department must spend years analyzing the sounds and the grammar of the Jita language so that they can decide how to write the language. But before that, Language Survey teams determined that the Jita language is distinct enough from surrounding languages that it needs its own translation of the Bible. But before that, people with a heart for missions and a passion for the Bible were praying that God's Word would be accessible to the Jita people so that they can hear the good news of Jesus and enjoy eternal life in Jesus.

THANK YOU for praying!!!

Tomato Pyramids

How do they make these perfect little tomato pyramids?

Welcome to Tanzania!

Will you survive?

We saw this sign today as we were exploring the area around the Mara River...

"Airboat Safari?!?!"  COOL! Sounds risky and exciting and adventurous. Let's check it out...

Oops! Oh well.

I asked the owner if it would take a lot of time and money to get the boat running again and he said, "No, it's no problem, it works fine, just a little wiring to fix, it's ok."

Hmmmm...

Welcome to Tanzania.