confused in translation

When I was teaching English in a business school in French, my students often had to produce a kind of project as part of their final evaluation. One term, a student who had come to fewer than half my classes handed in a piece of work which immediately looked suspect. It consisted of 4 or 5 sheets of printed paper, with very long sentences and no pictures or diagrams.

As soon as I began to read, I burst out laughing, amused but not at all impressed. It was clear that the student in question had gone to a French website on his chosen subject, swiped the text, and fed it through an online translation machine to get an English "equivalent". The translation was so literal that I had no trouble back-translating the first line, googling it, and turning up the original website.

The student of course got zero for his piece of work, and I did have to wonder whether he really thought he'd get away with it, or whether he just couldn't have cared less. It would show an utter lack of understanding of language to think that a computer could successfully “translate” an entire text in a way that would fool a native speaker into thinking it had originally been written in the target language. (Or perhaps he thought I wanted to spend as little time marking it as he wanted to spend producing it, and so would just put a random grade on it!)

I tell this story because learning Monkolé has reminded me of how difficult translation can be. Concepts which exist and are easily described in one language may be impossible to render in another. In Monkolé, for example, there are no such words as “brother”, “sister” or “sibling”. Instead, one speaks of “opposite-sex sibling”, “younger same-sex sibling” and “older same-sex sibling”. Which means that I use the same word to speak of my younger sisters as Marc does to speak of his younger brothers. So how do you translate “X the brother of Y” in the Bible, if you don't know which of them was the elder?

In a similar way, you can't say “son” or “daughter”, you have to say “boy-child” or “girl-child”. Which might sound unproblematic, until you realise that if you say to a Monkolé speaker, “Jesus is the boy-child of God” (you can't say “God's boy-child), it sounds to them as if God also has a girl-child! (The decision of the translators of the New Testament was to simply say “the child of God”, since a “perfect” translation isn't possible.)

Although this creates some frustrations when learning a new language, it is also fascinating, and gives a glimpse into some of the ways in which we think so differently from people from another culture.

There are of course lots of other difficulties which are encountered when translating, and I'm sure I will be writing more about them in the future!

oop North

Ten days ago we went “up North” for the weekend. A bit of background might help to explain where we were and what we were doing.

In 2002 I first came to Benin with a short-term mission team from France. We stayed in a town called Kandi, hosted by the local pastor and his wife. We visited churches in villages around Kandi and put on open-air events with the double objective of advertising the lending library set up by the Kandi church and sharing the good news of Jesus. During the trip I began to wonder whether God might be showing me that the next step for me after I finished my linguistics doctorate in France would be to return to Benin to work in translation work.

So in 2003 I came back to Benin on my own to spend 3 weeks with Grace Birnie, in Pèdè, a village near Kandi. Grace is a Canadian missionary who has been working with the Monkolé language for many years. She worked with Monkolé informants to analyse and write down the language, before beginning the translation of the Bible. The time I spent with her and her team made me fairly sure that God was calling me to work in Benin. At that point I assumed I'd be coming here on my own, but God had different plans!

In 2004 Marc and I got married, and in 2006 Marc came to Benin with a short-term team. He was working in the South of the country, but did visit Parakou, where our mission (SIM) has its headquarters, to talk with missionaries about possibilities for us to work here as a couple. He met a missionary who had worked on the type-setting of the Monkolé New Testament (published that year) and she told him that with Grace soon to retire, there was an opportunity for me to take her place on the translation team, and for him to work in discipleship and leadership training in the Monkolé churches.

This idea was approved by both SIM France (our sending office) and SIM Benin-Togo. Later, SIM Benin-Togo decided to keep us in Parakou for our first months, so that we could get to know other SIM missionaries better and meet the leadership of the Union of Evangelical Churches. They also felt that life in Parakou, a large town, would make the transition easier for us. So we have been living in a mission house in Parakou since we arrived here in May. God has provided Abraham, a student from Pèdè who has been studying in Parakou, to help us begin learning Monkolé. (Here in Parakou the main language is Baatonu, and hardly anyone speaks Monkolé.)

Our trip up North was therefore Marc and our boys' first opportunity to see the village of Pèdè and to meet the pastor and church there. It was also the first time they would see Grace's house, which we will eventually live in after her retirement in June next year.

The journey was wearisome, as we had to travel over a lot of what I call “Swiss cheese road”, with pot-holes sometimes 30cm or so deep, and capable of damaging your car badly if you accidentally drop into them. What took 3 hours back in 2003 when the road was newer, now took us nearly 5 hours (including a short break to feed Benjy).

Our first night there didn't exactly give us our much-needed rest. The four of us were sharing Grace's bedroom (she was in the small guestroom) and Benjy woke three times and I had to feed him to get him back to sleep (these days he is usually on just one feed a night). Then a cock started crowing outside our bedroom window at 2.30am and carried on for the rest of the night! Since the windows here never shut entirely, it was as if the cock was in the room with us, and we found it impossible to sleep!

Still, the rest of the weekend was well worth it. It was great to see Pastor Samuel again and to spend a lot of time talking with him and with Grace about our future move to Pèdè. At church on Sunday Marc introduced us in Monkolé, which earned us a very warm welcome! We were encouraged to find that we could understand some of the things people said – obviously our hard language learning work is paying off!

The plan now is that (all being well) we will move up there in January, and we will spend the months until Grace's retirement in a small house next door to her. Our lifestyle will change as much, if not more, as it did in the move from Europe to Benin. There is no mains electricity or running water in the village, so Grace has a solar power system which powers her fridge, lights and well pump. The small house has a kerosene fridge and its solar system just supplies enough power for 12V lights for the evening and small 12V fans for the night (apparently very necessary in dry season).

The biggest logistical question at the moment is whether Grace's solar power system can supply the amount of electricity needed to pump enough well water for us and her without her fridge shutting down! There may be another solution though, as a mission-owned petrol-powered pump has become available. We would welcome prayer that everything would fall into place for a January move, as we would like to have a few months' overlap with Grace.

sun, sand and sense of humour

It seems to me that language learning can be a bit like walking along a beach on a sunny day. Let me explain. When you start out, you look around and enjoy the fresh air, the sound of the waves, the feel of the sand under your feet. In language learning there is lots to discover and it's all new and interesting. As your beach walk continues, you begin to realise that walking in sand is hard work … and it would be so much easier to walk on solid ground. In language learning it seems such an effort to say anything in the new language that it becomes tempting just to use your own (or even your second, in my case!).

Another image I like is that of learning to drive a car. At the beginning you feel there is far too much to think about at once, and you despair of ever managing to put it all together and not find it a struggle. But eventually, after practice and perseverance, it comes naturally, and you don't have to think about all the little things separately any more.

One thing I have enjoyed discovering lately is the sense of humour and irony in Monkolé. We were talking with Abraham about the expression “abaa”, which means “bonne arrivée” (as they say in Beninese French) or “bienvenu” (or in English "welcome"). He said that it can also be used in a figurative sense. For example, if someone states confidently that it is going to rain, when there is no obvious reason to think so, you can say to them “abaa”, ie. “oh, you've been up to talk to God and He's told you that? Well, welcome back!” In the same way, if someone is talking like an expert about how things are in the United States, when they've never been there, you can also say, “Abaa” (“welcome back from your travels!”). If they have taken it in good humour, they will give the conventional reply, "O-oh".

Talking of travels, we did go up to the North of Benin last weekend. More about that soon...

(PS I have just been reflecting on the fact that using internet here is a lot like walking through sand … or swimming through treacle … or drowning in quick-set cement!)

language study

I have been meaning to write a post about language study for a while now … and here it is at last!

We have been studying Monkolé for six weeks. For those who are interested, it is a tonal language, with three distinct tones – rising, falling and flat. These correspond approximately to the tones used in English on the word 'right' in the following examples. Firstly, when someone wants to check they've understood and says, “You're coming with us, right?”, then when someone answers such a question with “Right,” and then when someone is giving instructions and says “Turn right at the next traffic lights.” If I have chosen my examples well, a native English speaker should recognise that in the first the voice rises, in the second it drops, and in the third it remains in “neutral”. But in an English sentence it is rare that the intonation of a single word will affect the meaning of that word, it is usually what is implied by the sentence which changes. In Monkolé the tone of a single word, or even a single syllable, is extremely important, as it can mark the difference between “house” and “robber”, “sun” and “smell”, “yesterday” and “parent-in-law”! The context will usually reveal which it should be – so if we as language learners can't hear the difference we will probably be able to guess it – but if we don't use the right tones when we speak we will be understood but probably laughed at!

Tenses don't really exist in Monkolé. Aspect is marked instead, which is whether an action is completed, continuous, habitual or potential. Words like “yesterday” or “now” are used to indicate when the action takes place.

When Monkolé is written it uses the international phonetic alphabet, but since I'm not sure I can use it on blogger, and you may not know how to read it, I am going to write approximate spellings using English sounds. I'm not marking the tones because there are so many of them and I'm not sure how to get all the accents I'd need!

Verbs aren't conjugated, instead small words are used before and after the verb to show what or who is the subject and/or object of that verb. There are several small suffixes such as -i or -u which do attach to the verb to indicate relationships like possession. So “ilaalu” is the king, “ile” is house, and “ilei ilaalu” is the king's house. But of course, if your voice goes down instead of up on the “e” of “ile” then you are actually saying “the king's robber”!

Some nouns are composite nouns. So “akoh” means car, but “akoh nla” (literally “big car”) means lorry, “akoh laylay” (“sky car”) is a plane and “akoh-i inyi” (“car of the water”) is a boat. A train however, is “pee-pah” … say it out loud if you can't work out why that should be!

Our textbook is a series of lessons produced by the missionary who originally analysed and wrote down the language, and who later translated the New Testament with a team of Monkolé speakers. The lessons are based around dialogues, which we read, repeat, try to understand, pick out grammar points, practise and replace words … and often we go off on sidetracks which mean that we discover even more vocabulary and helpful expressions. We study 3 hours every weekday morning, which would be a lot if it were just intensive language study, but we also take the opportunity to ask Abraham questions about life in the village (more posts to come about things we've found out!).

After six weeks of lessons we can construct simple sentences about everyday life, and understand them … if Abraham repeats them several times and slowly! We have the complaint of every language learner – people speak so fast in real life!! But we do have a feeling of satisfaction when Abraham arrives in the morning and we can greet him in Monkolé and pass on snippets of our news from the day before.

We are aware that we are extremely blessed to have Abraham as a language helper. He is intelligent, patient and very honest. He has a good sense of humour too, which is appreciated on days when we are feeling tired and befuddled!

We continue to be very grateful for Rachel, who looks after the boys while we are in lessons. She too is very patient, and Simon thinks she is wonderful! Benjy always looks very happy to see her too.