Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

His name is Wiliadi Mwasembe (wee-lee-AH-dee  mwah-SAY-mbay) and he is the Kisangu translation team leader.  Back in June, he and I sat in the Scripture Use office and poured over the recently-prepared Ruth and Jonah scripts to check their accuracy.  Upon completion of that task, we set the tentative recording date to be sometime in September.  There are way too many extraneous factors to have planned it any further out than that.  (Currently all of my other scheduled recordings after Kikinga this month are tentative.)

Time passed as I continued to plan and prepare for my transition into the recording phase of my work.  As September approached, I learned that Mwasembe and a number of other members of the team would be attending a 3-week discourse workshop in town.  In addition to them, we also have two other native Sangu speakers who work in the office.  I only needed a total of six people to speak the dramatized scripts, so before me was a great opportunity… record them while they’re here.

I spoke to Mwasembe, met with him to iron out the details and solidified recording dates of September 29 – October 2.  He and I both thought the workshop ended on Friday, September 26.  That would give them a weekend break before recording.  But, we discovered the workshop ended on that Thursday instead.  Time to shift the schedule.  We decided to record Fri, Sat, Mon & Tue as the entire team expressed the desire to return home as soon as possible.

That Friday (this past one) came and we started late.  Also, Mwasembe had to get two replacement speakers from Utengule (his home; less than 2 hours away) because two people suddenly had to leave Thursday afternoon.  I wanted to be upset but I am learning that’s the way of life here.  Backing out at the last minute is a preferred treatment instead of saying, “No.” right then and there.  The latter would be inexplicably rude to do to someone.  Whereas, the prior would be that way for those of us from the West.  God provided two excellent speakers to fill those roles and I even got an invite, “Welcome home.” from one of them as he was leaving.  He saw it as an honor to me to try to use his limited English to invite me to visit his home.  I understood his meaning and replied that I hope to visit soon.

Saturday was just me and Mwasembe as he had the most lines of all.  He spoke the narration for both books and a number of smaller parts, too.  The biggest challenge that day was discovering and eliminating an electrical pop somewhere in the system.  Never did figure out why it was there but starting a new recording session on the computer solved the problem.

Monday posed more electrical issues.  The power in the building fluctuated like I’ve hardly ever seen it before.  Drop to 200V.  Shoot up to 250V.  Not good.  So I fired up my trusty little Honda generator I brought from the States and we rolled on.  Then came different electrical pops.  I tried and tried to get rid of them but I never could.  Gladly, we were well ahead of schedule and were able to record enough takes to put together a decent sound.

Mwasembe and I proofed the recordings Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning before he signed off on my master scripts that what I had captured was indeed accurate.  Those two periods were probably my most favorite of all the time in the studio.  Many times Mwasembe caused me to look up from my script and stop the playing over the speakers because he was smiling and laughing so much.  It wasn’t an irreverent laugh that came from him.  It was a laugh of engagement and enjoyment because he was sitting there listening to his work, his translation, his mother tongue.  It was only the rough draft of a final product.  Just all the character pieces fitted together on the time line so we could proof the recordings straight from beginning to end.  But, even through the miscues, a few time gaps and clicks and pops I watched in amazement at how the story reached Mwasembe.  And this was the translation team leader!  Someone who labored over every one of those words for months already.  This wasn’t his first encounter with Ruth and Jonah, but may have been his first time experiencing the stories.

As I have more time and opportunity to work with the people of these oral language groups, the realization of the significance of my role in Bible translation continues to grow more and more.  I love my job.