Fri, Feb 9, 2007: smart neighbors and translators

Isaŋha,

Greetings from Cameroon, the land of cheap fruit and stray dogs. The greeting at the top of this letter is a traditional greeting in Kom. Kom is one of the many language groups spoken in the rural areas on Cameroon. One of our favorite students and our next-door neighbor is from the northwest province and her first language is Kom so I thought I would toss it in. She is over tonight getting some assistance with her homework. She came to Yaoundé to live with a missionary woman here in the city about 6 years ago. In the village, her education was stagnant and unreliable so after seeing her potential, she was asked to come and go to school here. She is in 10th grade now and does fantastic in all her classes. She still takes upper level English Language Learner classes but her vocabulary is probably better than mine. She is a joy to have around because of her charm and good manners and for her it is a nice luxury to have 2 teachers next door. She is very inquisitive and fun. She started and still leads a bible study club for young kids in the neighborhood all in French. She also is an outstanding athlete. She was a star soccer player and won best defensive player on my girl’s basketball team. She dreams of going to college in the states but I don’t know if her family would agree to it. Most girls her age in the village are getting married and having babies by now. I know she would do well.

I had the privilege this week to have a few minutes with Scott Clark, one of the hard-working bible translators whose office is in the same compound as RFIS. He has 2 kids at RFIS and goes to our church. He showed me a “language map” of Cameroon. There are 268 different languages spoken here and only about 70 have translation work done or working. Another 50 are in the process of getting work done in the next few years. One of the biggest obstacles to spreading the Word to many groups, especially the northern ones, is that they write in Arabic. Arabic is fairly easy to translate but the variations to many languages are so subtle that one misread phrase can change the entire meaning of a passage. For example, Fulfulde is written in Arabic but uses different enunciations to the vowels. If a word is written with an awkward phrasing it would diminish the message. Like if I wrote “the coat is wondering on the bill”. Just 3 little subtle changes in the appearance of the letters change it to “the goat is wandering on the hill”. The translators take their job very seriously and want to make sure that God’s Word is presented for them to get the most out of it. Many of the language groups are also Muslim. What’s odd about bringing the Word to them is that it is easier getting Arabic writing people to hear the Word than languages that use our Roman alphabet. The reason is that people who do not read Arabic know the Qu’ran (Koran) by memory not by reading it and it is deeply engrained. They can’t read it and see all the conflictions with Truth. They simply believe it and their minds are set. Arabic readers can be driven to see the Truth much easier because they can see the inconsistencies in the Qu’ran when reading the Bible. Not to say that it is an easy chore either way but it does make an interesting weekly update topic.

One useful tool the missionary translators use in the field is a cloth picture gram thing. It tells the most important biblical stories with pictures so anybody in any language can follow along. The one he had was from a guy in Tennessee who sells them on the internet at gowestafrica.com. I think they are about $10 and they ship. It would be cool in any Sunday School classroom.

That’s about it from here. Things are still plugging along fine. It has been so busy this year so far but with God’s grace we seem to manage. Now that basketball is over I don’t know what to do with my afternoons. I actually got home before dark 2 days in a row. Crazy.