Typesetting the book of Ruth

Hey everybody, I just completed my first official typesetting project! It's the book of Ruth in the Manda language of Tanzania. There are about 43,000 Manda speakers and they live in the southern part of Tanzania. They love their language, and they're excited to have God's Word in their own language.

The book of Ruth is usually one of the first books that we print in a new project. It's a great place to start because it's a short story and everyone can relate to it. It also becomes a great tool for the Literacy department to use as they teach people how to read and write their language.

So I typeset the book of Ruth. First, I prepared multiple different formats for the team to consider. One of them had justified text, another had ragged right text. We discussed where the book introduction should occur. Stuff like that. After the team settled on a general format, I inserted illustrations, captions, footnotes, page numbers, copyright information, title page, etc. I tried to make everything clear and easy to read.

Now the Manda people have the book of Ruth in their own language! Thank you again for your partnership in this ministry. We couldn't do this without you. Thank you!

Introducing the Jita Scripture app

Here it is...the Jita Scripture app! It's got every book of the New Testament, as well as Ruth and Jonah from the Old Testament. Some of the books even have audio recordings available. Listen to this...

This is a great way for Jita people to access Scripture, especially while they're waiting for the printed New Testament. People can download the app for free from the Play Store. Here's what it looks like...

So far, we've had over 1,000 downloads of the app. That means Jita people are accessing God's Word in their heart language! It's so exciting!

Another job on my plate

I've recently had another job added onto my plate. In addition to my role as Translation Advisor for the Jita Bible project, my organization has asked me to take on the role of typesetting. Now, when you hear the word "typesetting," you might immediately think of the old Gutenberg printing press from the 1400's with movable type where you have to layout individual metal characters on a page and get ink all over the place and press down one paper at a time.

Thankfully, that's not what I'm doing. Today, everything is digital, which is nice, but it means that I have to learn three brand new pieces of software. Last year I spent six weeks in an intensive training course learning that new software and learning best practices for typesetting. My responsibility as a typesetter is to take the raw translation data from a team and format it in a way that can be printed. By the time the text gets to me, it has already been approved by translators, community members, a translation advisor and a translation consultant. My job is to format it so that it's ready for the printer. For example, here's the raw translation data of the book of Ruth from a language group in southern Tanzania. 

It's full of standard format markers and Unicode numbers and it just looks like a mess. And here's what it looks like when I'm done. 

This job is in high demand right now because our organization is currently working on 31 language projects in Tanzania. All of them are in different stages, but they're all working towards printing individual books of the Bible or complete New Testaments. So there's a lot of work to be done. And I'm excited to get started, but there's a lot of new stuff to learn, so please pray for me.

Ready to Read

 Jita people are so excited about reading!

Recently, in the Jita village of Murangi, 18 people gathered together for a teacher-training literacy workshop. They are so passionate about their language that they want to teach others how to read and write. These new literacy teachers are now teaching 70 more people how to read and write in Jita. And the numbers keep growing! 

Jita people are waiting with eager expectation for the day when they will be able to hold the New Testament in their hands for the first time ever, and be able to read it for themselves and understand it. Please keep praying for us and for the Jita people.

photos by L.W.

I love maps!

I love maps! Maps are so fascinating. And I especially love the maps in my study Bible. When the Bible talks about Jesus leaving Capernaum and crossing the lake and entering the country of the Gadarenes, I can find that on the map. When the Bible talks about Jesus going through Samaria, I can find that on the map. Maps are so helpful. Which is why I'm excited that we get to include maps in our publication of the Jita New Testament.

 

But creating the maps takes a LOT of work. First, I have to search the translation to find all the relevant place names for the maps. Then I have to copy the words exactly so that I keep the correct spelling. Then I have to fit the Jita word into the appropriate spot on the map. Many times the Jita word is much longer than the English word so I need to do a lot of intricate detail work to make everything fit nicely and still be legible. Finally, we need to have the maps reviewed by Jita community members to make sure that they are clear and understandable.

 

Do you want to hear a funny story? So I was creating these maps in Jita, I had finished about 3 or 4 of them. Things were going well. I was starting to figure out the process. The maps were looking nice. And suddenly it hit me. I was using the wrong font on the maps. I was supposed to use the same font on the maps that we used in the text of the New Testament. It's a font that we have chosen specifically because it's easily legible for newly literate people. I just totally forgot. So I had to go back through the maps that I had already finished and fix the font. But thankfully, I learned a valuable lesson and now all the maps look good. I'm excited that we're one step closer to publishing the New Testament in the Jita language.

How important is a Glossary?

                                            

Consider this...how many Bible study resources do you have access to? 

Maybe you have a study Bible, a concordance, a Bible dictionary, or a commentary. Maybe you have Bible software on your computer. Here in America we are blessed with a wealth of Bible study resources. But the Jita people of Tanzania don't even have the Bible in their own language. 

Thankfully, we're getting very close to publishing the New Testament in the Jita language. And in the back of the New Testament, we will include a Glossary. A Glossary is a collection of important Biblical words and phrases, along with their definitions, organized in alphabetical order. So for example, imagine a Jita person reading Matthew 9:27,

As Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.”

Maybe this Jita person wants to know more about that term, Son of David. They can look in the Glossary and find an explanation along with some other relevant Bible verses to help them understand the meaning. A Glossary is a great tool for Bible study.

But we have had all kinds of problems with the Jita Glossary. Sometimes our translated text would become corrupted and entire sections of the Glossary would mysteriously jump into other sections. Other times, whole paragraphs would disappear. We had to sift through the archives to try and recreate those sections accurately. It was just one major problem after another. 

Clearly, these were spiritual attacks to prevent us from finishing the New Testament. Think about it, this little Glossary in the back of the Jita New Testament, will be the first Bible study resource ever printed in the Jita language. That's exciting!

Thankfully, by God's grace we finally finished the Glossary. And we saved it and made lots of backup copies :)

Now we're one step closer to printing the Jita New Testament!

Pondering Parallel Passages

 One of the final steps in preparing the Jita New Testament for publication is comparing parallel passages. For example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus asking his disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" It's important that we translate that sentence consistently in all three places. Thankfully, we have some amazing software that shows us all the parallel passages in the New Testament, but there are hundreds!!! 

It's a very time-consuming process, and it takes a lot of intensive focus. As you can see in the example above, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record the question of Jesus with the same exact wording. However, each Gospel writer recorded Peter's response differently. We have to be very careful and pay close attention to each word and each phrase in each passage.

And sometimes, one phrase shows up in a lot of places. 

For example, Jesus' command to love our neighbors shows up in Matthew (3x), Mark (2x), Luke, Romans, Galatians, and James.

Please keep praying for us as we finish up the New Testament in Jita!