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| Santos and Terry working on the Guarijio translation. |
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By Ian Fallis - 2009.09.03
How would you tell people who live in the mountains of Mexico about a shipwreck in the Mediterranean nearly 20 centuries ago?
For Santos, a believer from Mexico’s Guarijio tribe, and missionary Terry Reed, part of the process involved re-telling the story.
The two men are translating Acts into the language of Santos’ people. A couple of weeks ago, they were working on Acts 27, which includes Paul’s shipwreck.
To make the translation clear and natural, Terry would read a paragraph from what had been translated so far, and Santos would tell the story back to him. Terry would record what Santos said -- the words Santos would use if he was telling the story to other Guarijios.
Each section presented challenges. Perhaps the translation wasn’t clear enough on some point, so Santos’ retelling didn’t line up with the Word of God. On occasion Santos would miss saying something that was in the translation. Or maybe one or both of them would want to try a different approach. Whatever the case, the men sometimes needed to go back over a passage again and again.
It was painstaking and tiring work.
"Now when much time had been spent," to borrow Luke’s words, Terry and Santos reached Acts 27:41:
But striking a place where two seas meet, they ran the ship aground; and the prow stuck fast and remained immovable, but the stern was being broken up by the violence of the waves.
The time they had planned for translation was spent, and Terry felt pretty spent as well. He told Santos it was time to stop for the day.
Santos wasn’t ready for that.
"Oh, don’t stop now!" Santos said. "I don’t remember how Paul gets out of this one. I know he has to be bitten by the snake yet, but I don’t remember how he gets off the boat and onto the land!"
Terry couldn’t help but smile. "The story became alive and dynamic to him," Terry wrote -- exactly what a Bible translation is supposed to be.
God’s Word will move you. Let Him take you where He can unfold His plans for you. |
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