"Then everyone will understand everything!"

Part of my (Misha's) job is sending the translators out to villages periodically to have them do community testing with drafts of the translation. Last week Pastor Magoma, one of the Jita translators with whom I work, spent some time out in the Jita language area, and when he returned to the office this morning, I eagerly listened to him telling me about his trip. One story in particular caught my attention, and I thought you might like to read it:

One day Pastor Magoma traveled to a Jita village he had never been to before. He had with him several chapters of Acts translated into the Jita language and hoped to read the chapters aloud to the people of the village in order to receive some feedback from them about which parts of his draft needed improvement. A group of people, a mixture of believers and non-believers, gathered around to listen to him read.

Contrary to what he expected, the non-believers eagerly listened to the chapters and gave their full approval right away. They said, “You are preserving our language! You are now a respected person in our village for your work in writing down our language for future generations.” They did not seem to mind that the language preservation work was taking place by translating the Christian Scriptures; they thoroughly enjoyed listening to Pastor Magoma read chapters from Acts and were eager for more.

The Christians, however, responded with many questions. They asked questions such as, “How can you translate the Bible – do you know Greek and Hebrew?” and “Is this a paraphrase or a real translation?” and “Is this the work of a particular denomination?” and “Why did you choose that word in Jita for this theological key term?” The elders among them also wanted to know why some words were in modern Jita or even in Swahili, and not in the Jita of their ancestors. Pastor Magoma patiently answered all their questions and in the end, they broke into smiles, pleased with how he had responded.

Reassured that Pastor Magoma was doing good work, they asked, “Do you remember how Jita people used to sing hymns in their own language? We used to sing hymns translated into Jita in church. Do you think that you would have time to write down those songs in addition to your work translating the Bible? Then we can have a church service in which we sing hymns in Jita and read the Bible in Jita and everyone will understand everything!”