How does a translation happen?

Draft and re-draft until it sounds natural.

Check it against the Indonesian Bible to make sure that nothing has been left out or added in.

Run it past some fresh, unbiased ears to make sure that it's clear. Then do it again with input from an experienced translation consultant who checks for accuracy, naturalness and clarity.

Print, record, distribute and get community feedback.

What word should we use for God?

Seventy Nimboran chiefs and elders gathered to hear our draft and give input on some key terms like God, angel and Christ in their language.






Fun in the river

Flower chains

Rain



Friends for dinner

Tinny


Tinny as dog..

Tinny as dish (she wasn't a very good guard dog).

The ice cream man

Cool hair

Sundays

Enjoying the world's biggest krupuk after church one Sunday morning.



Giant moth

Autumn (almost 3)

 

The reluctant superhero. 



A rare, fun day at the office with Dad.











Next door.

Shredded coconut to go

Back to Malang


These photos go way back to October last year when Equeen (left), Maryam and I went to a 3-week narrative discourse workshop in Malang, where Phil and I lived for over a year doing language school. We learnt a method for analysing stories in Papuan Malay and then experimented with applying the discourse features that we discovered in these stories to our draft translations of stories from Luke and Acts. The challenge now is to get more stories that are useful for analysis and to make the time to do the analysis, as we only looked at two stories at the workshop. It was a long time to be away from the family, but well worth it. A bonus for me was being in Malang again and being able to catch up with some old friends. And get a decent haircut.



Kemtuik NT goes mobile

This picture goes way back to July last year when Philip helped the Kemtuik people get their New Testament loaded onto mobile phones.  It can passed on phone to phone via bluetooth. It is difficult to know just how much it is being used but one pastor's daughter said Dad's always got his mobile in the pulpit and he preaches from it! This picture shows John 3.16 in Kemtuik. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  



Here, some ladies from Mlap, which is related to Kemtuik, adapt the Kemtuik Apostle's Creed into their language.

Autumn's little friend



On Tuesday mornings I look after the cute little button on the right so her mum can do some work, and on Monday mornings it's the other way around. She and Autumn get on very well.



Time-out for Dolly.

Daddy's home

This is what happens when Phil gets home from work after an overnight stay in the village.

T.S. Eliot for advent

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For such a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Journey Of The Magi

Neighbourhood Friends

Reuben turns five

Back in August it was five years since Reuben's dramatic, unplanned homebirth. The unplanned part was being at home with four ambulance officers crammed into our little apartment bedroom, Soren asleep in the next room, me howling and laughing as Reuben made his way into the world. He hasn't been in a rush since. He's inherited his father's phlegmaticism and moves through his life at a very leisurely pace. We adore him and wouldn't want him any other way (except when running late). He makes us laugh til we cry. At dinner the other night Soren said: Hey Reuben, push away your icecream and have rotten cabbage. Reuben: Soren, that's sin. If not for the fact that he can't read yet (he's on the way, wandering around the house chanting g-g-g gecko! sh-sh-sh shoe!) I might have thought he'd been reading CS Lewis who said 'We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea. We are far too easily pleased.' My prayer is that he'll know the joy of knowing Jesus as his saviour and friend and of serving Him all his days.