Consultations In South East Asia And Ethiopia

Excerpts from the most recent newsletter of Antoinette van der Meulen, a Bible translation consultant:

“Asia: I was fortunate to leave the extremely warm weather in Pretoria, South Africa for some wintry weather. The men wanted to start working at 10am each morning because early mornings were so cold, but there was little time and a heater with a cup of ginger tea put things right. We revised Genesis and it was soon evident that we wouldn’t be able to finish this. The solution was to work an extra hour or so each evening and as requested by the translators, we worked six days a week. We couldn’t even spare a Saturday to visit the Himalayas, but hopefully I will get the chance someday. We worked in three languages – one with a population of 150,000; another with 40,000; another with 7,000,000. We lived and worked in a Christian hospital. This was very comfortable and an advantage was that it meant that I could have contact with other missionaries.

A new development in Bible translation is that local translators are being trained as consultants. In the beginning I was concerned about the quality of the work, but now that I’ve seen how accomplished the people are who have been selected to do this, I have become a supporter of the idea. It is usually a person who has completed a Bible translation in his own language and who is doing a Masters or a Doctorate on some aspect of Bible translating. For this reason we were supported this time by a person who is a consultant in training. It helped a great deal as he knows and understands the languages in which we were working

God willing, I will be leaving for Ethiopia on 28 March. This is a month before their Easter which means that the loudspeakers of the Orthodox churches and the Mosques will be competing each night with each other. Please pray that I will be able to sleep well so that I will be able to do my work. Also pray for wisdom in dealing with difficult sections.”