Rick and Anji Zook Assisting the Mouk to reach the Lusi 
Do You Know The Difference?
When the kids started on their usual morning things, I went and worked through the Mother Tongue Draft of chapter 15 and part of 16 of Genesis with Matilda. We’re both improving – she is learning how to tell me shades of meaning of different words, and I’m learning how to set up situations and possibilities so that I get the words or phrases that I need. I find that if I have a couple of possibilities which might work, and then I explain what I want to be able to say, I’ll get back something that might actually work. I’m getting better at asking questions too.
Languages just take time – particularly when you are dealing with the shades of meaning level. I mean in English can you explain to someone else the difference between raise and lift? They are very similar in meaning, but we use them in different contexts.
Raise your hand. Raise the bar. I want a raise. Raise the roof.
Lift your hand. Lift the bar. I want a lift. Get in the lift.
(I could go on . . . raise a crop, raise kids, raise cane, . . . lift a load, lift your feet, lift up your head, . . .). Sometimes the context can make all the difference in the world, particularly with some of the idioms above. I’ve used the same “words” raise and lift, but they carry different shades and areas of meaning. These are the things that can make language learning challenging.
Likewise in Lusi I have 3 words: irai (it goes up), ikaka (it raises up), isoa (it lifts up), but you start combining them and using them the meaning changes.
Irai ikaka lalaunga: He up (began) he raised (to start) his journey.
Irai ga ikakai: He up (began) and he raised himself (stood up).
Ikaka aiera ga irai: He raises its name and it goes up (He praises or gives honor to, makes someone’s name big).
Isoa patu ga irai: He lifts the stone and it goes up.
Anyway, that just goes to show you what kind of fun I am having with Lusi. I’m not being sarcastic. It is very enjoyable work. Kind of like a big puzzle when you don’t know if you have all the pieces or not, but you know that they’ll show up after a while. It’s fun to see the pieces go together. Because what we’re striving for is a complete picture of God’s Word clearly communicated in their language!
Tags: Language, Translation
Bush Cooking: Stir-fry Noodles
One of our quick family meal is stir-fried vegetables with noodles. Since our vegetables are limited to what the people around us grow, this can lead to interesting combinations. I am fortunate that I have two eager sous chefs to help me slice and dice.
First start your water for the noodles boiling. We use “Maggi” or “angel hair spaghetti” type noodles. Follow the directions on the package.
Then grab a handful of greens. We like a green called aupa which we think the English name is amaranth. Then starting with the stems all together start chopping. Dice spring onions, peeled cucumbers, ginger, garlic. Heat 1 Tablespoon of oil in the skillet and start adding the veggies. We supplement with canned vegetables when we can’t get enough fresh ones: water chestnuts for crunch, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, mushrooms, mixed Asian vegetables — drain and add.
When we first started this dish, we would use the flavoring packets from the noodles. But we discovered a new flavor enhancer that is now a family favorite: oyster sauce. Just a Tablespoon or two while the vegetables are cooking, then add soy-sauce to taste. When noodles are finished cooking add to the vegetables, and you are ready to serve! Yum!
Anj prepares lunch with her two sous chefs.
Tags: Bush cooking
Precious Word of Life
When you are thirsty, you get water to drink. Recently we went almost 8 weeks without measurable rain. Fortunately we still had some in the tanks. But what if there was no water? What if you saw others readily able to get a drink, but you could not? In many ways we westerners are like people who when we are thirsty for God’s word, we can turn to the scriptures at any time. I look around at tribes around us where there is no Bible, no living water for them to drink from. They are the Kove and the Anem peoples. Currently our tribe, the Lusi are in that same camp.
However, we are making progress. So far we have 2% of the Old Testament or 35% of the book of Genesis translated and awaiting checking. It is a small step, but very worth it. The Lusi people helping us with the translation have told us that they are excited to see God’s Word in their own language.
Pray that God would provide Bible translators for the Kove and Anem peoples. They need God’s word too.
Pray for us as we translate the portions of the Bible needed for Phase I of the chronological teaching.
Pray for Rick as he works with our citizen partners as they write Bible Lessons in Lusi.
Tags: Translation, water
Of Hobbits and Missionaries
It always interests and amuses me when our home church pastor uses a movie clip or a story from some film as a sermon illustration. Recently however, Anji and I again watched the movie The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King. Near the end of that movie there is a scene that hit very close to home and is still giving me pause to think and ponder. Allow me to briefly describe that scene, and then to share why it has extra meaning for us as missionaries.
The four Hobbit companions who were part of the Fellowship Of The Ring and who have seen and experienced nation-shaking and world-altering events have now returned home to their safe, quiet community. What each Hobbit has seen and experienced has shaken, stretched, and challenged them, and to say the least, has altered their worldviews in a major way. These experiences have also left each of them with varying degrees of physical, emotional, and even spiritual wounds which have only just begun to heal – some of which will never fully heal.
As the Hobbits sit around a table in their local inn enjoying all of the comforts and pleasures of home, they look around and realize that the lives or their friends, family, and neighbors have gone on just as they always have, and that these people have no idea of the monumental events that have taken place in their world. Not only that, these people have no desire to know about those events, they don’t want to hear about the adventures the four companions have been through, nor their trials, nor their hardships, nor their triumphs, nor their victories – all of which have had their part in changing the course of their world and future history.
In fact, the people to whom they’ve returned are far more interested in a giant pumpkin that one of them has grown. The looks on the four companion’s faces are very telling as they begin to realize that what they have seen and done is a burden that only they can understand and share between them – seemingly no one in their community cares or wants to know. The expressions on their faces as they realize this fact is enough to break our hearts, but it should also serve as an example of something that happens all the time in real life.
The same process happens to missionaries and others who have had cross-cultural experiences – often life altering and worldview changing – and then return to their own home culture, family, friends, and church body. Dr. Paul G. Hiebert, noted Christian Anthropologist, professor, and author – whose parents were missionaries, and who himself served as a missionary in India for a time – talks about this phenomenon at length in his book Anthropological Insights for Missionaries. Since Dr. Hiebert says it better than I can, let me share from pages 238 & 239 of his book.
Since we [missionaries] live on the borderline between different worlds, we find that no matter where we are, we are not quite at home. We are never fully assimilated into our second culture, but after a while we no longer fit our first culture either, because we have been changed and influenced by our experiences….
As we have seen, missionaries are often unaware of the profound changes that take place within them through their participation in a second culture. We often think of ourselves merely as Americans or Canadians living abroad for a time, and we expect to assimilate back into our first culture with a minimum of adjustment. We are shocked to find that relationships with our relatives and first-culture friends are strained and distant. We expect them to be excited to hear about our many experiences, but after an hour or less, conversation drifts off to local affairs about which we know little – sports, church matters, or family issues. The people at home have their own social order, and we begin to realize that we no longer have a place within it. Old associates do not know what to do with “missionaries on furlough” after we have given a church report or two. In their uneasiness over how to relate to us, they begin to ask when we are going back to “the field.”
This loss of identity in our first culture is not only social. It is also cultural. When we return, we can no longer identify uncritically with our home culture, nation, or even denomination. Consequently, when we criticize them, we so arouse the suspicions of our relatives and friends that they accuse us of disloyalty and even heresy.
Hiebert continues on with very accurate insight and makes many good applications in this section of the book and we would highly recommend the book to anyone who has had cross-cultural experiences – or plans to. Let me be quick at this point to point out that we are in no way whatsoever condemning our home church, nor our friends who make up the body there. On the contrary, we have always felt that we have had listening ears and understanding hearts among the people of our home church. I would say that it has done better than most in welcoming, accepting, and “dealing with” missionaries and those who have had cross-cultural experiences.
It is because of this acceptance and understanding that we are even brave enough to broach this subject and share our hearts with you all about it. Perhaps there are even some reading this who don’t. That is ok, we would encourage you to allow the Lord to work in your heart regarding this matter.
But what application should we make, what is the whole point of sharing this moving movie scene, a quote from this book, and our hearts with you all? It would be our hopes and our prayers that as each one of you encounter missionaries on home assignment or people who have been cross-cultural missionaries or folks who have had a cross-cultural experience of some sort (like a short term missions trip) that you would try and do several things.
First, realize that this person (or couple or family) may have had experiences that have shaken, stretched, and challenged them, and to say the least, have altered their worldviews in a major way. These experiences have also left each of them with varying degrees of physical, emotional, and even spiritual wounds. Each person’s experience will be different, just as we are all individuals.
Second, take the time to really listen to what they have been through – their trials and hardships, their triumphs and victories – even if what they are describing is so foreign to you that you can barely relate. Remember, what they have been through has probably been changing the corner of the world where they have been.
Finally, in whatever way the Lord enables you, help that person to return to life in your church, community, and society as much as possible. Your missionary friend or fellow church or cell group member who has had a cross-cultural experience is not really an alien; given opportunity, understanding, and a safe space in which to be vulnerable, in time they will be able to enter successfully into their home community and culture. Keep in mind that this person is a child of God and a brother or sister in Christ who will continue on into eternity along with us. The same cannot be said about any sports team, current event, or even a giant pumpkin.
Tags: changes, cross-cultural experiences, home assignment, relationships
Checking, Checking, Checking and Comprehending (Or Do They)?
Rick works through a comprehension check with a translation helper.
(From May 15th, 2011) Now it is my (Rick’s) turn to work on the passage for the next couple of steps in this long process. The first thing I do is a Content Check. I put the Content Check Draft up side by side with an essentially literal translation of the English Bible. I compare each verse in Lusi with the corresponding verse in English. I am checking to make sure that the full meaning of the portion has been transferred over. This is challenging as many times we can’t just substitute a Lusi word for an English word: there is not a one-to-one correlation as both languages see the world differently. I check the content because we don’t want to leave any meaning out, nor do we want to be adding in information that was not in the original. This takes some time, but it is very important because both mistakes can and do happen. I’m also doing my first proof-reading to catch things like missing words in the Lusi text and to make sure things like ‘person’ matches on the nouns and verbs.
After talking over my concerns and corrections with Anji, I then prepare for the next step, the Comprehension testing. I start by transferring the text file into a word processing template that I’ve made for this purpose. The Lusi Bible portion runs down the middle, the left side of the page contains my questions, and the right side has an extra wide blank margin for answers and any other notes. The questions I come up with on the left hand side are comprehension questions written in Lusi about the text, its meaning, and what happened in each ‘chunk’. I also go into the text and underline words and phrases that I want to get meanings for. Often, this is so I can be sure they are being understood correctly, but sometimes it is also for us the translators, so that we can be sure of the meaning of a word being used. Sometimes I circle words that I’d like acted out, again so that the proper meaning is being communicated. Once I’m done, Anji looks over it to see if there are any questions she wants added about things that need cleared up. Then I print off a copy and head to the village.
Each passage gets Comprehension Tested with at least three Lusi speakers. I sit down on a Translation Helper’s porch and read through the passage and ask them a few questions about the whole thing. After that, I go back and work through each chunk. Upon reading that chunk again, I ask specific questions about it. If it was particularly clear, or they are really into the story, then I usually don’t have to ask many questions because they can tell me all about the meaning of the chunk and what happened in it.
Once we’re through the questions we tackle the meanings of the words or phrases. This can be a real challenge sometimes because while we both know the meaning of what is being said, restating it in another language (especially an inadequate one like the trade language) can be difficult. And thus we work through the passage. I make any other notes like where we might need a little more work or a picture or a footnote. Each session I use a different color pen so by the time I’m done I can still keep track of who said what! The pages end up quite colorful.
Rick & Anji go over changes as a result of the comprehension testing.
Once the Comprehension Testing step is done, then it is time for a Corrections and Details step. Anji and I then sit down and create a Third Lusi Draft which contains the corrections, addition, deletions, and modifications. While these are not usually many, they are significant. Once in a while when one of our efforts to communicate something, particularly of a foreign nature, has really flopped, Anji will go back to the drawing board and start over on a piece of a passage. Then that portion has to go back through the Content and Comprehension steps all over again kind of like a “Do-not-pass-Go” card.
The for the next step, I take this new draft and verse by verse I do a Back To English (BTE) version of it, also know as a Back Translation (BT). My goal here is not to create a new English version (we probably don’t need any more of those), but rather, to be transparent to what the Lusi is saying. I want what is being communicated in Lusi to be apparent to anyone else reading it who doesn’t speak Lusi. This is very important for our Translation Consultant who will check this passage for us – because he doesn’t know any Lusi. Once I’ve done the BTE I try and let it rest overnight, then I check over it, proof-reading it and checking it against the essentially literal English Bible again. This can reveal places where information has been added or missed. Upon completion of this step, we send the BTE off to the Translation Consultant, but what happens after that, we don’t know yet. Once we do, we’ll let you all know!
Tags: back translation, comprehension testing, content checking, Translation
Taking More Steps to Translate The Bible Into Lusi
Rick & Anji work with a Translation helper to record the Mother Tongue Draft in Lusi
(From May 9, 2011) The second step of many in the process of translation has big names like “transfer” and “Mother Tongue Draft.” What we do is sit down with our exegetical draft where we’ve made our best attempt at Lusi, a Lusi speaker, and a voice recorder. Then we read our draft to the Lusi speaker, and he or she thinks about what we’ve said, and then they say it how they would best say it, and we write it down. This goes a paragraph at a time, a sentence at a time, or sometimes we work on words (particularly if we don’t have the right terms). Here is where we explain foreign concepts like wheat, grapes, camels, deserts, large houses that people do more than sleep in, how a king behaves, Egyptian customs, and so on to our translation helper. Here also we may back up a step and explain what we are trying to say and not succeeding. The helper may correct our Lusi and make things agree as they should, come up with new terms we might not have heard before, or say things in a different way that we hadn’t thought of, or come up with a better way to say things. Here the focus is on the details of things in the mother tongue.
Patrick helps out with transcribing the Mother Tongue Draft.
The third step continues the process of “transfer” and the “Mother Tongue Draft.” On another day, after things have had a chance to percolate a bit, then we do a “Mother Tongue Draft” recording. Once again Rick sits down with our now modified draft of the passage in Lusi, a Lusi speaker, and a voice recorder. Today our focus is on the flow of the large piece of discourse.
He starts by reading the whole passage to the Lusi person. Then he goes back and goes paragraph by paragraph or large chunk by large chunk. He reads it to our Lusi helper, and he/she thinks about it, and then retells the chunk to him in his/her best Lusi. Rick continue this way through the whole passage. At the end, once the translation helper has dealt with all the pieces, he/she goes back and retells the whole passage. Because he/she is talking at normal speed, this is too fast for me to keep up with typing. Rick records the whole session and then I or someone else transcribes it later.
Anji at work doing a revision on the Mother Tongue Draft
Once it is transcribed, and parts where my parser isn’t working well are checked with a Lusi speaker, then I compare how the translation helper dealt with the flow of the larger passage with my much choppier modified exegeted version. Then I take the best parts of his version and meld them with the best parts of meaning of my version, always looking back to the source languages and forward to how the Lusi people understand things. The hope is to have a passage then that retains the meaning of the original source languages and speaks the Lusi language clearly and well. The end result of the typing and taping in this step of getting the Bible into a Mother Tongue Draft, is that we end up with a better draft, more like they would say it, rather than me imposing my English patterns on the Lusi language.
So far we figure that we are averaging about 20-22 hours per chapter just on the first few steps. That means some are less and some are much, much more! Translation is a painstaking job of a 1000 decisions. We find ourselves tired and worn out by the end of the day. However, we are finding incredible joy in being able to do what we were sent here to do. We’ve only just begun; there are quite a few more steps and chapters to go!
Tags: Language, taping, transcribing, Translation, translation helper
Part of Our Job: To Strengthen Believers
(April 17) Friday morning we had a meeting with our Mouk partners and all our possible Lusi translation helpers (many of whom had been our language teachers). Most people in NTM starting into translation and Bible Lesson writing don’t have our situation – we have a small group of Lusi believers who were reached previously by the Mouk. So today as we met with the group, Rick was able to give a devotion and explain the upcoming translation work in the light of all of us functioning as a body of believers (1 Cor 12): each one has a different role and a different gift, but we all need each other. We hope that it was something encouraging for them.
You might wonder why we are here working on a translation if there are a small group of believers. Here is one reason why: Friday afternoon after the office work was finished I went out and talked with my friend, a young Lusi mother. She explained that last year when she and her husband had made a trip to town, they went looking for a Bible in the trade language. All they could find were Bibles in English. She doesn’t know English, so she didn’t buy a Bible. She wants a Bible for herself. Her husband has a Mouk New Testament, but he doesn’t have the Old Testament (there are some portions translated, but not the whole thing).
Let me ask you this, if you don’t have a Bible for yourself and you are a believer, how do you feed yourself? How do you grow? How do you have your mind renewed? How can you be encouraged? You can’t, except as others teach you – you are reliant on what others tell you. We are here to put God’s word into Lusi to strengthen the church and to reach those who are lost. We look forward to the day when that young Lusi mother can read a Bible in her own language.
One Step at a Time
We’ve begun translating! It seems like it has taken a long time to get to that point, but here we are starting on a new journey of many steps. We’re still trying to figure out who gets which job, but we both (Rick and Anji) will be working on the translation. Our first attempt is the story of Joseph, found in Genesis 37, 39-47.
Anji works on exegeting a chapter from Genesis and putting it into Lusi.
Right now I am working on doing the exegetical draft which means figuring out all the pieces of meaning in the source language and the relationships between those pieces of meaning and transferring that into Lusi. I am fortunate in that there are so many helps in English as I don’t know Hebrew.
First I read though the whole chapter in Genesis that I am looking at, then I read at least one good commentary. Then I break it into chunks, paragraph size. Then working a paragraph at a time, I read Translator’s notes (which has information on things like idioms and how other people have translated various phrases), at least 4 different English versions of the Bible, and one in Melanesian Pidgin, the trade language here. I have also gone to Strong’s Concordance and a Hebrew/English Interlinear version of the Bible among other things.
Then I think about how would the Lusi convey that same information with the same purpose and style as the original and write down my thoughts in Lusi, noting areas which I may need to dig deeper, or try for a more specific word, or for a more natural way to say a particular idea/phrase, or a better connector. It is a job of a 1000 decisions. Thankfully this is not the final product. It will be honed and tested along the way.
Sometimes I get stuck. Sometimes I bounce things off of Rick for a second opinion. So then I start again, back to the larger picture then down into juggling the details, trying not to drop any balls.
This is the exegetical draft, a very rough draft, the first of over 10 steps to reach the final product—hopefully scripture that will speak life to the Lusi. Today I worked my way through three paragraphs or 13 verses. This is not going to be a quick job or journey, but hopefully it will go faster as we get better at it!
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Or the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Traveling has a little different dynamic when there are no roads to get you there. This is a page from my journal about our trip back to the bush in the land of the unexpected after a year’s absence!
Our day began soon after 4:30 am. Rick got up and did his last minute things to get ready for the first flight of the day. He was out the door by 5, and then I puttered around doing my last minute things like packing up the toiletry buckets to go into the shed, stripping the bed of linens, getting the kid’s breakfast, and then getting them up and dressed and ready to go. There are always last minute things like returning library books, taking out the garbage, and hauling last little bits out to the shed. The supply guy helped me haul our luggage over to Supply so he could figure out the loads (It had been weighed last Thursday, but now it needed to go with the rest of what it was flying with). Another veteran missionary helped me take care of last minute stuff. The supply man informed me that we had enough for a 4th flight, but the pilot might not be able to make a 4th flight today, so we quickly shuffled through things so that the necessary things made it on the 3rd flight load. Don’t want to be without toilet paper! Of course Rick had packed things and I didn’t always know what was in the wrapped boxes. And he was out of reach as well. The kids were troopers and good helpers.
And then about 7:30 the kids and I and the supply guy went down to the airport wait for the pilot of the 206 to return for the second run of the day. The kids were so excited about “going home.”
The helicopter beat us to the Mouk airstrip. In the meantime Rick had managed to talk to some Mouk elders, and get the first load(s) sorted out for the helicopter. We arrived around 8:30, shook some hands of people, hauled luggage from the airplane to the helicopter, and then the helicopter took off.
It was beautiful weather with barely a cloud in the sky. The flights went smoothly. As we flew toward our village we could see different timber roads like red scars through the green forests. There is a timber company operating in Mouk territory and another one in Lusi territory. In the one year since we’d been gone, the timber company cut a road near our village and on up the ridge, and lots of amseri trees had grown up around our house, we could barely see our house or the helicopter pad for the trees.
One of the first things we saw was the village grandma, Pudi, dancing and waving branches. Other people came out to welcome us, – hugs and handshakes, and new babies, and surprise of all surprises our dog, Stella, came and found Keane. We hung out with the people. Kevin told us that the radio had gone dead just on Thursday. The grass had recently been cut and as I had been forewarned of pigs around, didn’t look as bad as I had expected. After things settled down a bit, we went inside to see how things had gone. Rick started opening the tap on the tanks, turned on the water pump, and turned on gas bottles. I started on opening window shutters and sweeping a year’s worth of accumulated dust.
Welcome surprises: Pudi and Bwoas the village elders were still alive, our dog still alive, the walls were relatively clean and free of mold. I had also left the lid off of my twin-tub washing machine (which I knew I had done) and there appeared to be a lot of debris in there but no live animals.
Unwelcome surprises: A dead and dried gecko on my office chair, two dead geckos and a dead centipede in the shub. One live centipede curled up on the schoolroom wall.
Really unwelcome surprises: One c-60 charge controller was dead and so was half of our battery bank (3 out of 6 batteries).
Of course we didn’t figure out the battery part right away, but we were able to get the helicopter pilot to relay our message that we needed a new charge controller on the next flight if possible and that we were temporarily without a radio, so that people wouldn’t worry about us if they didn’t hear from us right away. We were also able to order a bag of dog food – we hadn’t brought any in as we didn’t know our dog was alive.
The good news was that the folks at the Islands Region center were able to find us a usable charge controller, the pilot was able to get a 4th flight in for us and the charge controller made it in to us, and we were able to install it that night. The bad news; that was when we found out 3 out of 6 batteries were completely dead. Oops!
Also discovered that the freezer wasn’t working, turned on fridge and packed it with freezer stuff, turned off freezer and left it closed, fortunately not much refrigerator stuff came in! God knows what he is doing!
Also got beds remade (good surprise, none leaking!). Most of shutters opened – lots of mud-dauber nests between screens and shutters.
Went out at 4 pm to hang out with Jerad’s family. They had a new addition to their family, a baby girl. Supper was chicken gravy over toast and beetroot eaten by the light of the kerosene lantern as our power is so low. Our cat, Tom, appeared on our porch this evening, so he made it through our absence as well! He was a little skittish, but quickly made up to us as we paid attention to him. The kids fell asleep before I got their pillows to them! Early to bed tonight!
Tags: going home, surprises, traveling