Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Sangu’ Category

I can say that right now is probably the most exciting time work-wise since I started in the language project well over a year ago.  I’ve got nine completely recorded audio books of the Bible, not counting the two books already released in the Sangu language.  NINE!!!  Wow.  Ruth and Jonah make up eight of them in the following four languages: Kinga, Nyakyusa, Malila and Vwanji.  Nyakyusa will be distributed on Sept 17.  Malila will be community tested with a group of pastors on Sept 18.  Kinga may be tested next month.  Vwanji will be distributed next month.

The ninth book has been and is remaining the biggest task… The Gospel of Mark in the Vwanji language.  It is the first language to get this gospel and a big celebration/dedication is planned for the end of October up in a Vwanji village.  I’m taking the generator and the big speakers to play the gospel to the Vwanji people in the language they understand the best… their own.  Most Excited.  Me.

No matter what you call it, I have finished seven of them. The radio station is scheduled to cycle through the set playing one at 7am and one at 7pm everyday for a month starting today. Here’s a summary of what you can hear in the ads posted below:
1-6 sec : Language specific translation of Jonah 2:2
7-29 sec : Swahili describing our need for full-time scripture use & literacy workers to be based in each respective language area.
30-35 sec : List of nine languages in which we’re hiring folks; these names are all said in their respective languages: Ishinyiha, Ishimalila, Kivwanji, Shisango, Ishisafwa, Kikinga, Kinyakyusa, Hibena, Ichindali.
36-60 sec : Swahili describing applicant qualifications, where to get an application and the last date to submit an application.

Vwanji Advertisement (click to play)

Sangu Ad

Safwa Ad

Nyakyusa Ad

Ndali Ad

Malila Ad

Kinga Ad

And here are some pictures of the recording happening in my studio:

Last Wednesday, I was going here, going there, trying to deal with the theft we experienced the night before. While we were out, I stopped at the office to drop something off for a friend. Joey M., a Tanzanian pastor working with the language project in the area of partnership, told me of a planned trip the next day about an hour away down into the Sangu plains. They were going to have a Sangu language committee (all Sangu mother tongue speakers) meeting and he wanted to take 20 copies of RUTH and JONAH on cassette tapes. So, I made the copies and took them to him the next morning before they left. That was Thursday.

Friday came and it was a day of final recording for the Nyakyusa language for the same two books as above. While picking up Gordon M. (Nyakyusa) at the office, one of our team leaders gave me a special thanks for sending the cassettes with them. All 20 sold in less than 10 minutes! That’s amazing considering the economic struggles that people group has due to their geographical location. Then, the other team leader e-mailed me that afternoon and said another Sangu pastor wanted 10 himself! That’s on top of another 20 the translation team leader asked for!

I also have noticed while I’ve been out and about in Mbeya that every recorded cassette tape being sold, be it songs, preaching, or whatever, have color covers. What were mine in? Grayscale. I don’t even like the word now. Grayscale. Sounds like a gloomy disease. So, with the belief that our produced materials should at least reach local standards for those items, I redesigned the cassette labels and case covers with some color.

I chose yellow and green because those are the colors of the covers of RUTH and JONAH, respectively, for the eight language groups in which the books have been printed. We are a team, after all!

I started editing RUTH and JONAH before we left for Nairobi last month. Since, I’ve only had a chance to work on it here and there especially with T’giving and this house problem of ours. But, I have finished JONAH and am almost half way done with RUTH. Next after that is pretesting a group of Kinga speakers. Problem is… rainy season. It rains more up in Makete (yes, we’re over a mile high and it is above us) than it does in Mbeya with dirt/mud roads for three out of the three and a half hours it takes to get there. So, if I end up traveling there to test, I’ll need to take the seven hour, better road route.

Some good news about the Sangu RUTH and JONAH cassette tapes. The Scripture Use Coordinator held a seminar out in the Sangu language area so I sent some more cassettes with her. She sold 20 of the 25 I sent with her. Might seem small beans but that is huge!

These books have been available for months in written form, I have just recently finished recording them.  Last week, I traveled with a small team out to Usangu (in Swahili, to say the area of a certain language group, you put a U- on the beginning).  Their purpose was to distribute 2009 mother tongue calendars and to hold a Scripture Use seminar.  My goal was to record seven missing words out of my JONAH recording and to get some Sangu music for intro and outro on the cassettes.  Here are the drums they used for the music I recorded:

After Katherine finished her SU seminar, I took that opportunity to test the recordings on local pastors in attendance.  The response was nothing but encouraging words and high anticipation for their cassettes to arrive.  Here they are listening to the audio from my computer played through a PA system:

Now that I’ve gotten final approval, I’m entering the duplication and distribution stage.  That should happen next week.

Here is the audio from Jonah 1:15-16 in Kisangu.  In English, the verses say:
So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped raging.
The men feared the Lord greatly, and earnestly vowed to offer lavish sacrifices to the Lord.

Jonah 1:15-16 in Kisangu

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.

Below is my tentative schedule for the recording of Ruth & Jonah in the MICP languages.

2008
Sep 29 – Oct 3: Sangu
Oct 20 – Oct 24: Kinga
Dec 8 – Dec 12: Nyakyusa

2009
Jan 12 – Jan 16: Bena
Feb 9 – Feb 13: Safwa
Mar 16 – Mar 20: Malila
Apr 13 – Apr 17: Vwanji
May 11 – May 15: Ndali
June 8 – June 12: Nyiha

If you’re keeping up with all of the langauge groups with which we are working, you’ll notice one is missing from that list… Bungu.  That is because Ruth & Jonah are not finished in that language due to a lack of translators.  Although we aren’t able to move forward with the Bible translation, we have offered to help in Bible storying & songs.