The translation team has not been getting far with Exodus this month, mainly due to me being away for our annual conference, our trip to Cotonou and soon a few more days away to take our friend Judith back to Cotonou and get the car fixed in Parakou. The pastor and Philémon are carrying on with their individual translations, and when I have been here we've been plodding on through the description of the tabernacle.
Sometimes it really does feel hard, when you can't even be sure what the Hebrew means, but I am a stickler for consistency. So even if we aren't 100% sure what an object is, I like us to at least choose a word for it and stick with that. Sometimes it means pulling a sentence apart and then struggling to put it back together again, but it's a good brain-teasing exercise and there is some satisfaction in coming up with something we're all happy with.
Work is also disrupted by things you wouldn't have to contend with in Europe, like snake tracks being found in our compound and a search party being launched (no luck), or cows having got into Philémon's cotton fields (he has had to leave work today to go and sort that out). But of course we don't have other more “northern” problems, like snow making transport difficult!
Sometimes it really does feel hard, when you can't even be sure what the Hebrew means, but I am a stickler for consistency. So even if we aren't 100% sure what an object is, I like us to at least choose a word for it and stick with that. Sometimes it means pulling a sentence apart and then struggling to put it back together again, but it's a good brain-teasing exercise and there is some satisfaction in coming up with something we're all happy with.
Work is also disrupted by things you wouldn't have to contend with in Europe, like snake tracks being found in our compound and a search party being launched (no luck), or cows having got into Philémon's cotton fields (he has had to leave work today to go and sort that out). But of course we don't have other more “northern” problems, like snow making transport difficult!
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