O great, now they attack during the daytime!

We all know that mosquitoes attack most often and most viciously at dusk and in the early morning hours. And here in Tanzania, mosquitoes are not just a little annoyance, they carry all sorts of dangerous diseases, including malaria.

But then we got this report from the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania:

U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam, TanzaniaDengue Outbreak in Dar es Salaam and Environs 

The Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare is investigating an outbreak of dengue fever in Dar es Salaam and surrounding areas.  A public health team found several persons with dengue fever while investigating an increase in malaria-like illness.  Further confirmatory testing is taking place.  Earlier this year, dengue outbreaks have been reported in Somalia and Kenya, including a large outbreak in Mombasa.  

Like malaria, Dengue is transmitted by the mosquito but it is the Aedes mosquito, not the malaria carrying Anopheles, that is the carrier. The key difference is that this mosquito normally bites during the day. The risk of being bitten is highest during the early morning, several hours after daybreak, and in the late afternoon before sunset. However, mosquitoes may feed at any time during the day.

Nice! Now they attack during the daytime. And that's not the worst part of it. Last month this new species of mosquito invaded Musoma. Maybe this is what made Jeannette so sick. We never really found a complete diagnosis for Jeannette. At Ben's office, these mosquitoes are EVERYWHERE. They attack all day long. They bite through clothing. And they are relentless. 

Please pray for supernatural protection from this new enemy. Pray that God keeps us healthy and strong.

Translating Jita Jonah (part 4)

So we continue our series about how we translated the book of Jonah into the Jita language...

Step 1 - DRAFTING: The Jita translators adapted the book from Swahili to Jita.
Step 2 - TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING: I studied the text to make sure the meaning of the original was communicated accurately.
Step 3 - COMMUNITY TESTING: We invited Jita speakers to listen to the text and help us make improvements.

After we entered all the helpful improvements from our Jita friends, we sent the text away for...

Step 4 - CONSULTANT CHECKING

In this particular case, we emailed our Jita text and Swahili back-translation to an SIL Consultant in the UK. His job was to examine our translation and compare it to the original Hebrew to make sure that the meaning was communicated accurately. He also reviewed our exegetical decisions and translation decisions and asked us questions to challenge our thinking and make our translation more exact. After we answered many of his questions by email, we scheduled a time to meet by skype. This is always a circus in Musoma because the electricity is never reliable and the internet is never reliable. Thankfully, by God's grace, the three Jita translators, the consultant in the UK, and I all met by skype for three days with minimal problems.

Here are some of the things we discussed...

In Jonah 1:3, Jonah went to the port of Joppa and got on a boat. Then verse 4 says, "But Yahweh hurled a great wind upon the sea." Our consultant observed that in most Bantu languages (Bantu is the family of languages which include our languages here in Mara) if we translate the story that way, it sounds like the ship never left port. Therefore, we added a transition phrase at the beginning of verse 4, "So when they were going..." Now the narrative flows much more naturally.

3:4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

At first, we translated that verb, “will be overthrown” with a stative form of the verb [omusingarika] “will be overthrown” with no implication of who will perform the action. However, our consultant pointed out that this verb should be passive [omusingarisibhwa] “will be overthrown” (I know, the English is the same, but the Jita is very different) with an implication that God is the one who will perform the action. Good catch! Now our translation is more accurate.

 

And the list goes on. The consultant helped us with a few other questions about our exegetical and translation decisions. In addition to all this, the consultant also helped us correct some mistakes of punctuation, tense, and word order. After three days of hard work, we have a much clearer, more accurate Jita text.

 

It was a great experience, especially for me as a new Translation Advisor. I learned so much from the consultant about Swahili, Tanzanian culture, Bible backgrounds, team dynamics, and even how to use our translation software. I’m thankful for our consultants.

Translating Jita Jonah (part 3)

This is part 3 of a series about how we translated the book of Jonah into the Jita language.
Step 1 - DRAFTING - the Jita translators adapted the text from Swahili into Jita.
Step 2 - TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING - I studied the text to make sure that the meaning of God's Word was communicated clearly, accurately and naturally. I discussed the text with the translators and we made improvements.

Step 3 - COMMUNITY TESTING

This step takes different forms for different teams and different projects. Sometimes, we go out to the village and gather a group of Jita speakers. For the book of Jonah, we invited Jita speakers to travel from their villages into our office in Musoma. We read the book of Jonah in Jita and then asked questions to make sure that the average listener would understand the meaning of the text. We also asked the participants to help us discover the best Jita words in certain contexts.

Here are some examples of what we learned...

Jonah 1:4 "the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest." The Jita translators were struggling with the right Jita word to translate "tempest." They knew that many Jita people are fishermen and would therefore have various terms for storms at sea. Therefore, they decided to ask the community. The testers said they use [rikubuji] for a crazy gust of wind and [echiiwure] for a fierce wind that lasts for a while. The translators decided to use [echiiwure].

Jonah 1:9-10 "Jonah said, 'I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.' Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, 'What is this that you have done!' For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them."

This method of ordering events with the past perfect tense flashback idea is VERY difficult to say in Jita. We asked the Jita community to help us with a better wording. We decided to say...

"Jonah said, 'I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.' And then he continued to tell them, 'I am running from the LORD.' When the sailors heard this, they were exceedingly afraid. They said to him, 'Why have you done this thing?'"

All of our testers understood the order of events perfectly.

Jonah 4:2 "I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful." The Jita translators have been struggling for a long time finding the right Jita word for "grace." Grace is the unmerited favor of God toward man, an undeserved gift from God to man. That concept is not readily accessible in Jita culture (another reason why they NEED Scripture!!). We asked the community testers and the testers suggested [obhwitiriranya] which seems to fit very well.

PRAISE GOD that now Jita people can read about God's grace in their own language!

Jonah 4:6 "Now the LORD God appointed a plant." I thought the word "plant" was simple enough, but the Jita translators were trying to find a word for a plant which would grow up and spread out and provide shade. The three Swahili versions each used a different word. One said "plant," one said "grape vine" and one said "cucumber plant." Therefore, we asked the community. I showed photos like this...

...to help the testers think of the best term. The Jita have a word for "a thing which grows after being planted intentionally" and a different word for "a thing which grows after being planted unintentionally." Unfortunately, neither of these words really fits in the context. Finally, after much discussion, we settled on "small tree." I think that will work just fine.

These community tests are great opportunities for us to share our passion for God's Word and our work in Bible translation. Pray with us that God will use these community tests to get people excited about reading God's Word in their own language.

What is it?

Take a guess, be creative. What do you think this device is called and what is it used for? Tanzanians use it often.

It's called "mbuzi" which means "goat" in Swahili. It has a little stool to sit on while you shave the inside of a coconut. Brilliant!

King Jesus is With Us

Join us in our Advent reading this year. We're looking at God's promises to be with his people. Here's our Bible reading schedule...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1XCekGacO5fTjE2T0xwcktabHM/edit?usp=sharing

It's a work in progress, so please help us make improvements.

The Light of Hope

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; 

on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." 

--  Isaiah 9:2

We started our Advent celebration on Sunday. First, we needed some advent candles...so we designed our own.

We found glass jars and filled them with rock salt around a candle.

Then some simple ribbon added Christmas colors.

Finally we lit the first candle and enjoyed a fun meal of Jeannette's famous cinnamon rolls, scrambled eggs and mango fruit salad.

Have a Blessed Advent!!

Thankful

This Thanksgiving we were thankful for...

feasting with wonderful friends...

relaxing and watching football with friends...

pumpkin pie...

our mini-turkey (in America we call it a chicken)...

sharing traditions with Tanzanian friends...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!