Minor characters steal the show
Bilhah and Zilpah were such prominent characters in the Old Testament story of Jacob.
You remember them right?
Probably not, but Akolet language co-workers, Gili and Lonsi wouldn't let these two women go during a session of Bible translating. They practically stole the whole translation show.
Missionaries Adam and Julie Martin attended a two-week Bible translation workshop in Papua New Guinea where they worked with Gili and Lonsi, as well as with a group of other new missionaries in other tribes who are also in the process of language study.
The Martins would get together in the afternoons with their language co-workers after their morning classes to practice translating Genesis 37.
They would get a rough draft into Akolet and have Gili and Lonsi tell it back to them as the missionaries recorded it.
"Oh my goodness, at the start it was like pulling teeth," Adam and Julie wrote. "They didn't know what we wanted from them, and we ourselves were having trouble wrapping our minds around the concepts we learned each morning, much less making it clear to our helpers what we needed."
For the first two days, the only thing that really stuck in Gili and Lonsi's memories from the translation was that Jacob had multiple wives, two of which were Mbila and Silpa (the Akolet pronunciation of Bilhah and Zilpah).
"I'm sure that never before have [Bilhah and Zilpah] received this much attention," Adam and Julie wrote. "The point of all this is, of course, that they are not prominent characters, but ... Gili has an uncanny knack for remembering names ... and we had to learn how to give less attention to them and more attention to the true main characters of the story to get the points of that passage across."
The Martins and their language co-workers did eventually get the project complete.
"With a few helpful comments from our translation consultants to finish it off, we have Genesis 37, the first Scripture ever in the Akolet language," Adam and Julie wrote.
Please pray that the Martins will be able to continue pushing through translation with Gili and Lonsi in the future and that this workshop will be an encouragement they can reflect on.
You remember them right?
Probably not, but Akolet language co-workers, Gili and Lonsi wouldn't let these two women go during a session of Bible translating. They practically stole the whole translation show.
Missionaries Adam and Julie Martin attended a two-week Bible translation workshop in Papua New Guinea where they worked with Gili and Lonsi, as well as with a group of other new missionaries in other tribes who are also in the process of language study.
The Martins would get together in the afternoons with their language co-workers after their morning classes to practice translating Genesis 37.
They would get a rough draft into Akolet and have Gili and Lonsi tell it back to them as the missionaries recorded it.
"Oh my goodness, at the start it was like pulling teeth," Adam and Julie wrote. "They didn't know what we wanted from them, and we ourselves were having trouble wrapping our minds around the concepts we learned each morning, much less making it clear to our helpers what we needed."
For the first two days, the only thing that really stuck in Gili and Lonsi's memories from the translation was that Jacob had multiple wives, two of which were Mbila and Silpa (the Akolet pronunciation of Bilhah and Zilpah).
"I'm sure that never before have [Bilhah and Zilpah] received this much attention," Adam and Julie wrote. "The point of all this is, of course, that they are not prominent characters, but ... Gili has an uncanny knack for remembering names ... and we had to learn how to give less attention to them and more attention to the true main characters of the story to get the points of that passage across."
The Martins and their language co-workers did eventually get the project complete.
"With a few helpful comments from our translation consultants to finish it off, we have Genesis 37, the first Scripture ever in the Akolet language," Adam and Julie wrote.
Please pray that the Martins will be able to continue pushing through translation with Gili and Lonsi in the future and that this workshop will be an encouragement they can reflect on.