BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO
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| Terry with his translation assistant. |
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June 17, 2009
by Jackie Fallis
Even the smallest-seeming aspects of translation work can be crucial, missionaries Terry and Renee Reed rediscovered recently in Mexico.
"If a language is unwritten, how does the language-learner determine where one word stops and another ends?" Terry wrote. "Especially since, at the beginning, everything just sounds like one endless word."
Once things are broken down, patterns can be seen. Parts of speech start making sense, and grammar can be determined. But word breaks are an important early step.
To approach the issue, Terry had three different Guarijío people who were semi-literate in Spanish write things for him in Guarijío. "Unfortunately," Terry wrote, "All three different speakers broke the words in different places."
"Plan B: We had a very intelligent young Guarijío man helping us a couple of years ago with lesson writing and my co-worker, Dennis, had the foresight to hang on to the material he wrote," wrote Terry. "After studying three notebooks full of written material, I found that the same guy split the same words the same three ways."
But Terry didn't give up, looking up some material written in Guarijío for the radio. That started to give him some insight.
"After some lost sleep thinking about it, lots of discussion with co-workers and my wife, and lots of prayer seeking wisdom and answers, the Lord pointed me in the direction of a couple small pieces of information that unlocked the secret to what I was looking for.
"Perhaps it seems like a small thing, but it does have a major impact on both our understanding of the language and grammar which makes for a better translation, but it also makes the translation more readable."
Praise the Lord with the Guarijío team that they figured out this crucial part of the written language, and pray for the translation work to continue smoothly. |
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