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Prayer Partner Letter

February 2014

Prayer Partners,

Dear Prayer Partners,

Norm Weatherhead is Director of Language Affairs for the work of Pioneer Bible Translators in Papua New Guinea. This past October he worked with the Mborena Kam national translators to finish checking the last books of the New Testament. One may be tempted to think that once the translation is done, it shouldn’t be long until the Mborena Kam New Testament is printed and copies made available to the people. However, this is not the case. In fact, there are 39 items that Pioneer Bible Translators uses in preparation for typesetting a New Testament.

In his December newsletter, Norm wrote the following:

There are just so many aspects involved in trying to produce the very best translation that is accurate to the original languages of the Bible (Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic), that has gone through translation principles to make it flow in natural village language style, and most importantly, that the message is clear to all those who hear it in their own mother-tongue language.
Before typesetting, there are a number of action points still to be done. Recently, Stephen Piki (primary Mborena Kam translator) was in Madang choosing various illustrations to be included when the NT is printed. These include Bible illustrations for culturally difficult passages as well as maps for the back of the Bible, such as Paul’s three missionary journeys, and a map of the Middle East during the time of Jesus.

Another task is to work on running all of the Scriptural “Checking Tools” which we have. We are so fortunate to live in this day and age where we have so many powerful computer programs which can assist us in our work in tremendous ways. The “Run the Basic Checks” looks at such things as “Are quotation marks being used consistently throughout the New Testament?”

Often the programs will find errors where there is an opening quotation, but a closed quotation marker isn’t present. And so the verse is marked with a “Missing Component” mark. Other basic checks are the use of punctuation, capitalization, paired words, etc. You’d be amazed at how many times there is an extra space inserted between the last word of a sentence and the punctuation that closes the sentence….

We also check for consistency among verses with similar wording, and we look at how consistently the people are using special key terms, like priest, Sabbath, temple, prophet, etc. In many cases, these key terms can be translated in identical ways. But this will not be the case in many places, since context and word usage are so important….

Please pray for the plans that are set in 2014 for three volunteers with Pioneer Bible Translators who are traveling to Papua New Guinea to work along with Stephen to prepare for typesetting. In February, Wes Beasley will assist with the parallel gospel consistency checks; in March, David Parrish will do village checking for naturalness; and then David Robinson will assist with the read through (of the New Testament in its entirety) and initial typesetting.

As Director of Language Affairs, I will then give the approval for Lori Witham to begin typesetting – a process that takes approximately four months. The final visual check is performed for any errors (such as formatting, page numbers) and then it is sent off to the printer. What a privilege it is to be part of this process of bringing God’s greatest gift to the people of Papua New Guinea – the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Thank God for the rigorous and thorough step-by-step checking procedures that Pioneer Bible Translators’ missionaries go through to make sure any translation they work on is as Biblically accurate and natural sounding in the target language as possible.

Pray that all the checks will be accomplished in a timely manner so that the Mborena Kam people will finally have God’s Word available in the language of their hearts.

Pray that the lives of the Mborena Kam people will be transformed by those Scriptures.

Pray for all the national translators in every other language group where Pioneer Bible Translators serves, that as they work on the Scriptures that they and their families will have good health and their basic needs met so they can give full attention to working on the translation whenever they are scheduled to do so.

Thanks for your prayers,

Gerald Denny
Care Department Director
Pioneer Bible Translators