• Lead morning prayer time at the office.
• Provide food for the Nend translator who is in town.
• Write a letter to the Provincial Government requesting funding for airstrip maintenance.
• Work up a summary of the duties of a Board of Management to send out to the Mum Board in Katiati.
• Write an eviction letter to a tenant who is two months behind on their rent.
• Purchase anti-malarials for a visitor who will be coming over this summer.
• Work on the logistics of getting a hospital patient back to the village after she finishes her treatment this week.
• Arrange for purchase of translation supplies (pens, paper, etc) for the Nend translation team.

This afternoon if all goes well I can get into some translation work.  That is the part I like best so I try to work in some translation each day.

Things seemed to have settled down a bit over the past 20 minutes.  But before lunch I get to hand deliver the eviction notice.  That should be entertaining.  Actually it is not a full blown eviction letter.  Rather it is more of a blustery “pay your rent or leave the premises” letter.   So I don’t start the day by being totally wretchedly heartless.  That comes later in the week I suppose.

This should dispel any notions that people have about missionary work being glamorous or exciting.  Occasionally it can be that but often the reality is that it is a job, like any other job.   The retirement plan is much better than most jobs though.

When we started work among the Lower Ramu language groups back in 2002 we were introduced to a new method for developing alphabets.   This new method relied more on input from the speakers of the language and less on the linguistic expertise of the expat translator.   Using this method, alphabets could be developed for many languages during the course of a two-week long Alphabet Design Workshop.  Here is how it worked in the Marangis language group where we conducted an alphabet design workshop in 2003.

Writing a story in their language for the first time.

The first day of the workshop saw about a dozen men and women ready to work on an alphabet for their previously unwritten language.   That morning we gave them the assignment that each of them would write a short story, using their knowledge of the english alphabet, in the Marangis language.  If there were sounds that they did not know how to write they were just supposed to make up a temporary symbol, or leave a blank.  We would work on finding a way to write it later.  At first they were a bit intimidated by the idea but most of the participants soon got into the flow of the assignment.

Once the stories were completed, each writer read their story out loud to the group.  When they had all read their stories the group selected one to put on the blackboard.  The author carefully wrote his story on the board and then the fun began.

At the top of the blackboard we listed each letter that had been used in the story, in roughly the same order as the english alphabet.   Then starting with the first letter on the list, we asked the participants to give us three words which start with that sound, three words with the sound in the middle, and three words ending in that sound.  These words were listed on a second blackboard.  This is actually harder than it sounds and it was often a bit of a struggle to find nine words for each sound.  And some sounds simply do not occur in all positions in a word.

Working on the Alphabet Book.

As we wrote out the words, occasionally a new sound would be found that had not occured in the original story.  Those sounds would be added to the alphabet on the top of the blackboard.    As the workshop went on the list of words and sounds grew until by the end of the third day we had covered all the sounds so the participants’ satisfaction.  Now it was time to decide how to write those sounds. 

Much of this was fairly straight forward.  Since english is the national language of Papua New Guinea, we use the english alphabet as the basis for the alphabets we develop for the vernacular languages.  And many of the sounds in the vernacular correspond nicely with the sounds in english.  So, for example, we write the “s” sound as s and the “t” sound as t.   But what about sounds that do not have a corresponding english sound?

In this case we try to find an letter in the english aphabet that is somewhat close to the sound in the vernacular.  Or if there is simply no good correspondence we might use what we call a special character.  A common special character in PNG languages is the barred i.  This is an i with a cross through it and it represents a central vowel that does not exist in english.

There is often a lot of discussion as the participants work to decide how to write their language.  Our role is to offer alternatives, show what other language groups have done with similar sounds, and help guide the discussion.  Since it is their languages it is ultimately their decision how to write it.

When they had made decisions for how to write all the sounds, we asked them to go back and re-write their original stories using the new alphabet.  These stories were published in an Alphabet Book for the language.  This book included a list of the sounds of the language and the corresponding letters and also all the stories that were written in the course.  This was the first book ever published in the Marangis language.

Charles reads a story in his own language for the first time.

Five years later, the Marangis people have published a large number of books in their language and have used this alphabet extensively.  And so far we have found no additional sounds and there have been no problems with the alphabet that they developed.  While this approach does not work with every language, in the case of the Marangis people it allowed them to quickly develop an alphabet and start writing in their own language.

Over the past twenty-five years, things have changed a bit in the computer world.   With the current software we can search a vast array of commetaries, study the original Greek and Hebrew, check and recheck our translations and prepare the finished translation for publication; all on a computer not much larger than our old 1985 model. 

Besides the computers, other things have changed as well.  When we first started working here the people among whom we ministered were largely illiterate.  So we were somewhat limited in terms of the level of training that we could do.  But now as the education level in PNG has risen, so have the opportunities for training.

Just this week Mike Herchenroeder started training a group of seven Papua New Guineans from five different language groups to use a high-powered piece of translation software called Paratext.  This software, produced by the United Bible Society, is a powerful tool for translation checking and editing.   For several years our branch has wanted to train more Papua New Guineans to use the translation software so that they could take more of a lead role in working on their own translations.   Finally things came together this year for us to start that training.   When a donor gave enough funds to purchase six new Toshiba laptops earlier this year, we were ready to go.

Mike instructs several national translators to use Paratext

The men who are participating in the course are from the Ap Ma, Aruamu, Akukuem, Mbore, and L’ao langauge groups.  They represent a wide range of experience, from Maso, the Ap Ma translator who could honestly teach the course himself, to Francis, one of the Aruamu translators who does not appear to have ever sat in front of a computer before.   The the more experienced men are good about helping their less experienced co-workers.  And I am coming in the afternoons to help with the more hands-on part of the lessons.

By the end of the two-week course, the participants should be able to move around in the program and will have a basic understanding of how to check spelling, make edits, check for consistency, run word lists, etc.  Basically they will be able to do a lot of the editing and correction of their translations themselves rather than waiting for one of us to assist them. 

We know that one two-week course is just a start.  Each time these men come to town for the next several months they will need a refresher.  But we hope that by the end of this year, any of these men will be able to come to Madang, check out a computer, and work independantly on their translations.  This is all a part of our on-going efforts to train the Papua New Guineans to become co-workers and not just assistants in the process of Bible translation and literacy.

The finished translation of Acts in Ap Ma

The Ap Ma people number about 7000.  They live in an area of thick forests and swampy grasslands in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.   John and Bonita Pryor, one of Pioneer Bible Translators first missionary teams, had begun working among the Ap Ma people back in the late 1970′s.  Several years ago John and Bonita had to return to the US and Maso, an Ap Ma speaker who had been trained in translation principles, continued on with the translation work.   Late last year the final check was completed on the book of Acts and last month Lori Witham, our desktop publishing specialist, put the final touches on the book.

Lori supplied the color cover and the print shop run by the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ukarumpa did the printing and binding of the book.  Three hundred copies were printed and will be sent out soon to Samban, the  Ap Ma village where Maso lives and works.  Maso and the church at Samban will see to the distribution of the new books.

This is a real milestone on the road to having the complete New Testament done in Ap Ma.  Later this year a new PBT missionary, Jill Riepe, will begin working with Maso and the Ap Ma people to help move the translation program along.  Our dream is that in a few years the Ap Ma people will be able to own, not just a single book, but instead will have the priviledge of reading the complete New Testament in their own language.

• World Population: 6.5 Billion
• Languages Spoken in the World: 6,909
• Languages with Probable Need of Bible Translation: 2,393 (representing 200 million people)
• Languages with Some or All of the Bible: 2,454 (438 have a complete Bible, 1,168 have a New Testament, 848 have Scripture Portions)
• Languages with Translation Programs in Progress: 1,998 (representing 1.2 Billion people)
• New Translation Programs begun since 1 October 1999: 641

Much has been done, much is being done, but much remains to be done.  At the current rate in which new translation projects are being started, we could see a project begun in every viable language by the year 2033.  The Forum of Bible Agencies  has set a goal of of completing all the needed projects in the world by 2050.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.