Hobbies

When I visited Benin in 2003, the missionary translator I stayed with told me that singles on the mission field have a lot of spare time, and so they should make sure they think about how they enjoy spending time and bring necessary equipment with them. She loved knitting - and of course knitting needles are easily transportable!

Parents of young children may not have as much spare time, but I do think it is good for us and our children to have hobbies or projects. I was impressed by all the different sports and other activities our children were able to try at school in France last year, and decided that one thing we could do here was to learn the recorder. I learned as a child (descant and tenor) so with a good book I am capable of teaching, and I thought it would at least be good for them to learn to read music. If they could enjoy it as well, and perhaps go on to learn another instrument later, all the better!

The boys, therefore, have been having recorder lessons (and practice sessions) since September. So that they could see that I was also setting myself a challenge, and so that we will be able to play duets in due course, I have set myself to learning to play the treble recorder. Learning new fingering is a little like learning to speak a new language, but it is coming!



I have also been carrying on with crochet, and made this doll for Eve's birthday:

Advent

Last year in France we had Christmas lights, decorations in shops, adverts and various Christmas events to let us know that Christmas was coming. This year ... not so much! Christmas in the heat is not a novelty any more, but this year we have started a new tradition to help us think about the coming celebration. Marc suggested lighting Advent candles, and so I put together this Advent ring, and he read the first devotion on Sunday evening.

Help!

In one of the villages which the translators visited to test part of our
translation, the people didn't know the word "sobi". When it was
explained to them, they said, "oh no, we say 'bua', we don't use 'sobi'".

The translators explained to me that in their own variation of the
Monkolé language, both "sobi" and "bua" are used to express the concept
of "help". But "sobi" is used when one person helps another and the two
collaborate to get something done. "Bua" is used when someone offers to
help and the other gives the task over to them.

However, a variation of the language seems to exist where "bua" covers
both meanings. Despite the danger of those people not understanding at
first, or feeling that it isn't quite their version of the language, I
think we'll keep the nuance. My team certainly seem to feel that it's
important (and not to do so could lead to misunderstandings for those to
whom "bua" has a more restricted semantic field).

It is interesting to me that a language with relatively few speakers in
a fairly small geographical space can still have considerable variation
among different speakers.

More electricity, please!

Managing to juggle enough electricity for our house and the translation office has been one of our on-going struggles. The small building where we've done the translation work is situated about 30 metres from our house, and it doesn't have its own supply of electricity. Thin cables run to it from our house, unfortunately losing rather a lot of power as they go. It has always been difficult, particularly in the afternoon, to run both the office and the house from our solar panels.

Marc had the idea of swapping the office with the schoolroom, which is situated in a small house, also on the mission property. This house has its own solar panels. School only happens in the mornings, so our house would no longer have to provide electricity for another building in the afternoons.

So last month we moved the school into the independent building, and our translation office into the small house. We had help from some of the kids' friends and Pastor Samuel's eldest son, Caleb.



Then we had to make sure the solar panels on the little house weren't too over-shadowed, which meant cutting down some of the trees behind it. Philémon, Caleb and another young man took up that job, and despite a lot of climbing and dodging falling trees, managed it without any injuries! (Can you spot Caleb up in the tree in this next photo?)





I am happy to report that after a few hiccups the new arrangement is now working well!

like a lily?

This morning I was comparing two parallel passages in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. They are very similar in the original text, though not completely identical. Whoever originally translated them into Monkolé hadn't noticed that these were parallel texts, and so I have two translations and have to work out – with the help of the team of course – which version is best.

This brought up an interesting translation question. Both 1 Kings 7:26 and 2 Chronicles 4:5 (identical in the original text), describing the large basin for the priests to wash, says, "its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom" (NIV 1984). I found two different translations of this in Monkolé:

In 1 Kings 7:26 it had been translated, "andɛu mɔ iyi í yɛ bɛi kɔɔfu, à cooi bɛi kokoi jĩi ndii lisi", meaning "the edge was like a cup, they made it like the flower of the lily plant" with "lisi" being the transliteration of the French word "lys", this being an unknown plant in the north of Benin.

In 2 Chron. 4:5 it had been translated, "andɛu mɔ iyi í yɛ bɛi kɔɔfu, à cooi bɛi kokoi jĩi iyi í fũ anu", meaning "the edge was like a cup, they made it like an open flower".

It seems to me that what the first gains in precision, the second makes up for in comprehensibility for speakers of Monkolé. Perhaps lilies had a particular meaning for Israelites, but it seems to me that the important thing in this passage is the shape being described. And it will mean more to the Monkolés to read "an open flower" than to read about a kind of flower they've never heard of before.

What do you think?

Photos

The internet is working(ish) this evening so I thought I'd post a few photos of life here at the moment. (Note - not that well, I wasn't able to send it immediately.) Here are the kids playing with friends at the pastor's house in the village:



On our way home through the fields - Eve has managed to hitch a life!



Marc preaching in the Kandi-Fô church last Sunday:

--   Hilary DENEUFCHATEL  BP 134 Kandi  REPUBLIQUE DU BENIN  Afrique de l'Ouest/West Africa    www.try-lingual.blogspot.com  

A few minutes of the work of a Bible translator

A quick glimpse into my work:

I am working through our Monkolé text of 1 Chronicles, which means I
need to do lots of checking that names are the same everywhere they appear.

In 9:6 we meet a Zerahite who the NIV calls "Jeuel", and who is "Yéouel"
in the French Nouvelle Bible Segond. We transliterate names from French
into Monkolé, which means he becomes "Yeuɛli" which is fine, as that is
what I find in the Monkolé text. (And the "y" sound is used more
frequently than "dj" in Monkolé, so it's probably better with a "Y" than
a "J".)

The Word Commentary I am following tells me that Jeuel is also mentioned
in Ezra 8:13, so I open up Ezra in Monkolé to check how we've spelt it
there. Ah, but the text I'm looking at has all its special characters
"messed up" (things like the "ɛ" in "Yeuɛli"). It was typed up with
different software, and we have to do a "Search and Replace" to get them
all looking normal again.

I thought one of my translators was supposed to do that while I was in
France, so I open up my file where I noted their work. Sure enough,
Philémon should have done it, and I am fairly sure he'd told me he'd
done it, so either I haven't collected his work off the server, or he
didn't save it up to the server when he'd finished it (easily done with
the connection problems we have here).

In the copy I have on my computer the name is "Yeuli", so it could be
changed to match 1 Chronicles, although in Hebrew it is actually spelt
slightly differently. Anyway, I need to wait until I go on-line at the
end of the morning to check the Ezra file. If I modify a file which
isn't the most recent copy my software gets confused! For now I write
myself a note so that I don't forget pour Jeuel.

My commentary also says that he appears in 2 Chronicles 29:13 (I check
the Hebrew text, and it is spelt the same way as in 1 Chronicles). I
open up that file and it is spelt "Jeiɛli" (probably following a
different French translation) so I modify it to "Yeuɛli".

And it's back to 1 Chronicles 9:6 ...