Translation Day 9: livering things that make you happy

Advisor Notes - Wolwale Onnele (Luke 9:18-27)

9 Days of Translation Checking

Today is Day 9 of this celebration of checking Luke in the Onnele translations last month. Thanks to everyone who viewed the posts and the few who left comments. This is taking too much of my time right now, so I will not keep this series officially going. But I will continue these posts as often as I can to relate more of the 70+ translation stories that I took note of last month.

When we came to Luke 9:24, that was a verse that was hard to translate. Here is what the NASB says…

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.

The first draft of the Onnele translations all looked something like this (with literal English back translation)…

Le mana samo wola ye laip wone’ni, laip wone’ni ese fafaile. Mana fei samo wola ye laip wone’ni ka yupene ki, laip wone’ni ese uporo.

If a person really livers [= thinks] continuously life of him/her, life of him/her will be ruined. Person [who] not really livers [= thinks] continuously life of him/her and follows me, life of him/her will be good.

A couple notes on this first draft…

• This followed pretty literally the Tok Pisin source text that had been prepared from the back translation of another vernacular translation in the region and had gone through an exegetical check by three translation advisors.
• The biggest differences from the pidgin source text is the lack of prepositions and equivalent conjunctions in Onnele.
• Another main difference is that the pidgin source text for “wishes to save his life” was wari tumas long laip bilong em, which means something like “is very concerned/preoccupied about his/her life” (tumas means ‘very’ and does NOT mean ‘too much’). However, the way the Onnele languages express this idea is with the word wola ‘liver’ used as a verb. It is generally used as a verb to mean ‘think about’. Note that the constraints of the Onnele language make it very difficult to talk about ‘saving’ even when it is talking about one person saving another person from immanent death, although that is a little easier. It is more difficult when the meaning, as in Luke 9:24, refers to saving oneself. However, Papua New Guineans are masters of implied information. To “really think about something” clearly means in Onnele that the person is placing a priority on the preservation of his life or on the things that contribute to a good life.
• Note that the Onnele first draft uses the word laip a total of four times. That is a borrowed word from Tok Pisin that obviously comes from the English word ‘life’. Onnele has many such pidgin words that have come into their vernacular languages, just as Old English incorporated words from Scandinavian and Norman contact. However, in our translations we aim not to borrow words from Tok Pisin if there are perfectly normal ways to express the meaning in the Onnele heart languages. So I wanted to ask about ‘laip’.
• Finally, although the Tok Pisin source text may carry the correct meaning and may be sufficient for producing that meaning in some of the 11 languages in our translation project, it was questionable if this first draft clearly expressed the proper sense of this verse. The biggest concern was the part that read “Person [who] not really livers [= thinks] continuously life of him/her and follows me…” What exactly is being negated in that clause? Is it just that the person doesn’t really think a lot about his/her own life, or is it that the person doesn’t think continuously about his/her life? The true sense of this verse should be that the person actually loses all concern for this present life on the basis of following Jesus. The first draft of the Onnele translation left too much room for ambiguity, excuses, and rationalizing one’s (dis)obedience to the call of Christ.

The revised draft of the Onnele translations now reads more like this…

La mana samo wolaye ommo ese yangke wone aiyem, mana namo ese fafaile. Ka mana fina empo samo wolyumalo ommo ese yangke wone waiye uporo ka yupene ki, mana namo ese waiye uporo.

If a person really livers [= thinks] continuously the things that will make him/her happy, this person will be ruined. And the person who really liver loses [= purposely forgets] the things that will make him/her exist good and follows me, this person will exist good.

A few notes about the changes…

• Le was changed to La. Both words mean something like ‘if’, but this is why Papua New Guineans are in the driver’s seat and I’m not. They know intuitively what sounds right to their ears even when both words would carry the right meaning.
• The continuous marker -ye was combined with the verb rather than being written separately. This is simply a spelling convention that we are trying to follow consistently. For any linguists out there, this morpheme always seems to hang with the verb. For another morpheme -pu which might seem at first glance to be structurally equivalent to -ye since it means [+completed] rather than [+continuous], we are writing that separately because it does not always hang with the verb. It can actually come at the end of the verb phrase or the end of the whole clause. Some might analyze it as a clitic.
• Notice that we are no longer borrowing the word ‘laip’. The Onnele translation now refers to the person who “livers the things that will make him/her happy,” and it talks about the person himself/herself being ruined or existing good. The original Greek text has a sort of play on words with multiple senses of the word ψυχή psuche ‘soul/life’. In talking about seeking to save or losing one’s own life, the meaning seems to point not primarily at the preservation from death, but of a certain quality of life that is self-seeking at the core. But regarding the result of either seeking to save or losing one’s status in the good life, the ultimate end is self-ruin or preservation from death, respectively. This is made clear in the following verse: For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? (Luke 9:25 NASB) Therefore, the translation is now a bit less literal in terms of word-for-word correspondence, but it is much more clearly meaningful and accurately reflects the significance of the original.
• The conjunction ka was added. Ka literally means ‘and’ so that is why it wasn’t originally included for the Tok Pisin conjunction that means ‘but’. However, the Onnele translators later realized that ka fits appropriately here, and its usage is a bit more broad than English ‘and’ and Tok Pisin ‘na’.
• The relative pronoun fina ‘who’ was added. It was probably okay without it, but this makes the sentence flow more smoothly and clearly.
• The verse now reads samo wolyumalo ommo “really liver loses [= purposely forgets] the things…” The meaning now is clearly an intentional activity of the person and cannot be confused with a more passive experience of life that may have been a possible interpretation of the first draft.

Translation Day 8: don’t need a sail to sail

9 Days of Translation Checking

Today is Day 8 of this celebration of checking Luke in the Onnele translations last month.

When checking Luke 8:26, right away it was obvious that we didn’t express the meaning of ‘sailed’ as in “So they sailed over to the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.” (NET)

But how do you translate an idea that comes from a boating culture for a language group that lives in the foothills of the mountains? They are separated from the coast by a few miles of jungle, sago swamps, and their traditional enemies.

Since the cloth sails of the boat are not in focus in this verse, I wasn’t so concerned with making sure the mechanics of sailing are referred to in this verse. My main concern is that the translation is clear that they went across to the other side of the lake in a boat and not by walking around the lake along the shore. Here is the Wolwale Onnele translation with literal English back translation…

Nu painri repo e fun wamo, painri plele pike plola e nu Gerasa. Pike plola namo sa yeye repo e distrik Galili.

They went opposite of big lake, they went came to part ground of Gerasenes. This part ground it lies opposite of district Galilee.

So when I pointed out to the Onnele translators that we didn’t have anything in this verse about sailing, they laughed and said, “How are we bush people going to say anything about boats. We could use our word for tying logs together on the river to make little rafts for sending garden food down to our village, but that’s not what Jesus and the disciples did.”

I explained that it didn’t matter so much about referring to ‘sailing’ or to any boat, but how would Onnele speakers know when they read this that they didn’t walk around the lake to the other side?

“Oh, that’s not a problem,” they said. And then they explained to me that the two verb phrases they used here painri repo “they went opposite” and painri plele pike plola e nu Gerasa “they went came to part ground of Gerasenes” make it clear that they went across the lake. They would have used other words for go if the action involved walking or going around the lake. And besides, they asked me, “Isn’t it clear from vv. 22-25 that they’re still in the boat?”

So context really helps here in this verse where the Onnele speakers don’t have a word for ‘sailing’. We Bible teachers constantly press upon our students to pay attention to context. For the Onnele speakers, it seems that context always plays a more important role in distinguishing between potentially ambiguous forms.

Tomorrow: livering things that make you happy

Translation Day 7: the wind also hears

9 Days of Translation Checking

Today is Day 7 of this celebration of checking Luke in the Onnele translations last month.

At the end of the story of Jesus calming the storm, he and the disciples ask a few questions in Luke 8:25…

And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were fearful and amazed, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?” (NASB)

Earlier drafts of the Onnele translations did not include anything to express the meaning of ‘even’ in the phrase “even the winds and the water.” It’s the kind of word that can probably be left out and it doesn’t make much difference. After all, if you leave the word out, the implied information of the verse still conveys the meaning of ‘even’. But during this last translation workshop, we became much more aware of many intricacies of Onnele grammar and the function of little discourse particles that are often difficult to translate. So we didn’t have to leave out an explicit expression to convey the meaning of ‘even’.

The Goiniri Onnele translation now reads like this (with literal English back translation)…

Ka wu yalile nu nanrona, “Bilip empo pone sa waiye pei?” Nu disaipol nemnum ka flilineri ka nemnalile none kore nanrona, “Empo wu yangke ommo namo, mana mee wu sa fina? Wu yire mi kelo ka rapu re yane nupi kepe nupu mi wunini.”

And he asked them this, “Belief of you, it is where?” The disciples were afraid and they were amazed and they asked one another this, “Since he does these things, man here he is who? He speaks strong talk and wind also and water even hear his talk.”

So we added re ‘also’ to the translation, but we had to be careful where it was added. If re was added after rapu yane nupi “wind and water,” then it would mean something like “water in addition to the wind.” But the meaning of ‘even’ in this verse is functioning to say that the wind and rain are not the sorts of things that they would expect to be obeying his instructions. “People, yes, but not the creation!” But no, it was true. Even the wind and the water — the wind re and the water — hear his talk.

It’s really fun in the process of translation checking to recognize that a little word like re ‘also’ can fit grammatically into the sentence at various places, but the meaning changes depending on just where it fits in. The Onnele translators were really happy to add that little word in and hear how it really emphasized the same point that the original text was emphasizing.

This verse also includes several other examples of linguistic insights that have only recently come to my attention. Knowing these things means I can advise the Onnele translators that much better…

1. Most verbs are regularly inflected at the beginning of the word to identify the person and number of the subject. So, for example, kali ‘I ask’, yali ‘you/he/she asks’, mali ‘we ask’, pali ‘you-PL ask’, nali ‘they ask’. But what I only recently learned is that quite a few verbs can also optionally mark the direct object for singular or plural with a suffix. For the verbs yalile ‘he asked them’ and nemnaline none ‘they asked themselves’ in Luke 8:25, the -le and -ne suffixes mark a plural direct object.
2. Some verbs can also include a prefix that doesn’t inflect with the person and number of the verb’s subject. Thus, in Luke 8:25 the verbs nemnum ‘they were afraid’ and nemnalile ‘they asked them’ both include the prefix nem-, which can be glossed as ‘around’ or ‘about’, as in ’round about’.
3. The discourse particle kepe (and its shortened form ke) is used to mark counter-expectation. Therefore, its inclusion in Luke 8:25 also contributes to expressing the meaning of ‘even’ in “even the wind and the water hear his talk.” These little particles also seem to be used more frequently at points of mounting tension around the climax of a narrative. That makes sense if the climax is understood as the tension that comes from not knowing what to expect next in the sequence of narrative events. A climax may thus be marked by several events in sequence, each marked with this particle that signifies counter-expectation.

Tomorrow: sailing without a sail