Lingala

Hello! Spring break is over... back to work!

...work on... what?

I dunno!

Anyway, you know what I found last Saturday? Poking around once more at The Talking Bible blog led me to the Talking Bibles website which led me to Audio Scriptures. At Audio Scriptures, I can listen to the recordings of the Bible online for free! I might sound like some type of advertisement, but honestly, I love this website! As a linguistics major, I love languages, and so I love hearing the sounds that people make in different languages that speakers of English couldn't possibly try to pronounce--I just like hearing different things!

But let's not forget that these languages available for a little look-see (hear-listen?) at this website are more than just exotic sounds. Take Lingala for example. Heard of it? I've never heard of it. Not until I saw it on this website. So what do I do? I click on it to hear it. What do I hear? Something African.

"Something African."?! Pardon me, I'm Asian-American (Taiwanese to be exact!), so the only non-Western European languages my ears are familiar with are the East Asian ones. But still, I can't just write off a language that people think, feel, argue, forgive, honor, encourage in as "something African." So now what do I do?

What does any curious college kid do? Why, they look it up on Wikipedia! So what does Wikipedia say?

Lingala is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers.

Shnikies! Over ten million people speak this language, and I've never even heard of it! People in four countries speak this language, and I've never even heard of it! The official language of two countries, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo (did you even know there were two Congos?), and I've never even heard of it! About eight million people live in New York City while more than twelve million people live in Tokyo. This many people, and we probably just write them off as "something African." That doesn't sound right.

And yet, the reason I only heard about this language and its "over 10 million speakers" is because I wanted to hear some exotic sounds. That in itself doesn't sound quite right either. So you know what I really like about Audio Scriptures? It acquaints me with a part of the world I was earlier ignorant of. It isn't right just listening to sounds, so I look up the language, then its speakers, then their countries... And now what? I can pray for them.

Joshua Project is a site I like to use for more detailed information. It's a website that compiles information about different people groups. So looking at the Joshua Project website, I learn that the Lingala of DRC are already primarily Christian. The church is already fairly widespread and established, so when I pray, I can praise God for this!

See? Isn't the internet good and fun? You should try it. And as I sign off--let me leave you with a view of a beautiful page of the Bible in Lingala...


--kowai-kawaii

Check this out!

Go check out "Nyungwe Bible Translation"! As you can guess...it's a blog completely devoted to the translation of the Bible into the Nyungwe language in Tete, Mozambique. Nyungwe is

a language spoken by more than 250,000 people living in the region of the Zambezi River.

It's a concise little blog that shows anybody who's interested, from financial and/or prayer supporters to any old person like me who has an interest in the subject, a little bit about what goes on in the world of translation. It's not necessarily all that academic, because it's not here to instruct us about how to translate or anything, but it is very professionally written. I believe an American missionary working on the project writes this blog. Based on his post in the May of 2008, linking us to his other blogs, he is David Ker,

a media access specialist and member of Wycliffe Bible Translators based in Mozambique, Africa.

Wycliffe Bible Translators, by the way, is probably the biggest organization out there devoted to translating the Bible into all the languages spoken by all the people on Earth. (But more info on them later!)

One post I like is one from April 2006, where more light is shed into the process of Bible translation. In my mind when I was younger, I imagined Bible translation to be a dangerous, adventurous journey where a family would go alone into an unknown area and live with the "natives", as the natives do, slowly learning their language and developing a script for it. But now that areas of the world are more developed, I suppose it's more common for things to be done more efficiently as a group effort. With training, nationals are actually doing more of the actual translating now, not foreign missionaries. Computers are available, too.

This post in November 2007 reveals to you the dedication these people have for translation. It's boiling hot in Mozambique, even in November, so the most comfortable place to work is in the shade outdoors!--on little wooden chairs? With our worldviews and living standards, I'm sure I'd be thinking about how my butt's so sore and my feet are all dusty, but really--this is home for others! And reading the previous post, this Pastor Semo (the joyful, smiling man in the picture, I presume)--his wife had passed away about two months prior. That he still has this passion, drive, and joy is completely inspirational to me; it really is a testament to how God heals.

This blog averages about 4 posts a year: this is probably due to busy schedules and perhaps limited internet access. Posts are kept short, probably due once more to limited internet access. As for popularity, I suppose it is not that popular--the post with the highest number of comments contain 2 comments. Most posts are commentless and a technorati search yields no results.

Besides all that technical stuff, I'll be coming back to this site as a reference about ways in which Bible translation occurs. There's not a whole lot, but it's just so cool to be reading about something that's happening right now. In real time. Otherwise, the only contact I'll have with a particular translation process is probably just the finished product. w00t!

--kowai-kawaii