The year was 1989 and that was the year we were persuaded to involve ourselves in an inter-confessional translation of the entire Bible in Bobo Madare. By that time Dad had been working in planting many churches in Bobo villages: planting the physical church and helping to build the structures for those church groups to meet in. I, at the same time, was very busy in producing literature, teaching at Maranatha Institute, heading up PEDIM, doing seminars and doing some all-Africa ministries as well. My time was totally engaged and I was very conten with the Bobos having a New Testament, a SS program and other booklets in their language. It was probably one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my life in Africa when I was asked to be part of an inter-confessional Bobo Madare entire Bible translation team. This meant one version for the Catholics with the Deuteros included and another version for the Protestants, without the Deuteros. The basic text was to be identical for both versions.
But once having made the decision to do an inter-confessional translation of the Bobo Bible, with the help of the International Bible Society, we went on home assignment that year and began to raise money for this project. We were at the same time under the Christian and Missionary Alliance and also the International Bible Society. As concerned everything that had to do with the translation project, we followed the rules of the Bible Society, and concerning everything else in our ministry, we were still under the auspices of the C&MA.
We needed financing for the equipment we would need - computers, printer, office space. Along with the input of the Alliance and Roman Catholic churches, we had to select the translation team. We had to raise money to help pay the Bobo Protestant translator, long trips involved for the four of us to travel to Daloa, Ivory Coast, to do our checking periodically with our Bible Society consultant. Money was needed for paper supplies, ink and other office supplies.
Personnel wise, the Alliance and the Roman Catholics each had to give a qualified translator to work with me as head of the translation team. We needed office space in the city of Bobo. Inter-confessional committee members had to be selected which would make decisions concerning vocabulary and other textual decisions. Our consultant was always available for help as well. Dad was the oil that made the whole project engine run! He drove long miles, participated in committees, typed endless manuscripts and learned the computer programs involved. He also kept me on an even keel as my work load had been increased tremendously. There were certain ministries, like TEE, Bible School teaching and others that I could not drop completely. And of course Dad continued through all of this time to plant churches throughout the Bobo countryside. He no longer let his name stand for mission committees - we had enough committees in the translation project.
Things began to fall into place when we returned to Bobo from home assignment. We had solicited funds from several sources and thanks to their faithfulness we were able to proceed. Ouézzinville-Sud church gave us an office and the two translators and I worked there first thing each weekday morning. Then they translated more material for us to check the next morning. Right to the end of the project, our "thorn in the flesh" was our Protestant translator. He is a very complex man but the Catholic translator was a delight to work with. I often had to solve an argument between them when I first got to the office each morning. We had purchased computers for each man and taught them to use them and they did well with that. Towards the end of the project, I came to the place one day when I just had had enough with the disagreeable Alliance pastor and I said I was resigning from the project and left the office and went home! (I had never done anything like that in all my years in Africa!)
It did not take more than a couple hours for the church President to be at our door. He was very sympathetic with my plight (he too had difficulty with this pastor), but he said if anyone was to resign it would have to be the pastor and not me. He called an emergency meeting of the translation committee and everyone reaffirmed my work and soundly bawled out the translator-pastor. And so we continued on to the end.
We had an inter-church committee which made decisons on major vocabulary, names, etc. And these were very interesting. Terms like the Holy Spirit (different for Protestants and the Catholics) had to be discussd and decided upon. We had to decide whether to use the Jula or French form of major names. It was decided to use the French form. Holy Spirit was a biggie. The Catholics used Holy Intelligence and the Protestants used God's clean life force. They compromised by saying "God's life force" and everyone was satisfied. It was both interesting and heavy work to work on all of these biblical terms. The Catholics, Alliance and Baptists were all involved in the final decisions as we worked together in committee.
The Bible Society provided (in French) a translation manual for every OT book or section and this was a big help. They also had regular seminars where all of us translators from all over French speaking Africa got together to be instructed in major OT books - the Poetry of the OT, Isaiah, Job, and others. These were held in Abidjan, Ouagadougou, Bobo, Bouaké. It was also a time of friendship between translation teams. Most people in the church have no idea of what is involved in a translation project and it was good for like minds to get together.
Our individual teams also went regularly to Daloa where our consultant lived and would spend a week or more finalizing a book/books for printing. These were grueling weeks of work. One of our men would back translate from Bobo into French a verse, then the consultant would ask all kinds of questions about what, why, who - or propose another alternative using French words. We would stop and discuss among the three of us and make a decision whether we had such an expression that would serve better in the situation. These sessions were so intense that on one visit, by the end of a week - and with another week ahead of us - I was so exhausted that Dad took me over to Yamoussoukro to the President's Hotel there and we spent two nights and swam in the pool and I was ready by Sunday afternoon to face the work again.
Our Catholic translator and Dad and I all got along well together. The Alliance translator was moody, so sometimes he was on top and other times a pill. On one trip to Daloa, we stopped on Sunday morning at the Basilic in Yamoussoukro for morning mass. That was an interesting experience. Our Catholic translator always participated in handing out lliterature as he attended our evangelical rallies and other Protestant events in town. We all slept in the same guest houses and ate our meals together, so we became a very tight team. Which greatly facilitated the work. All of this happened while we were still fulltime international workers in Burkina Faso.
But there is another chapter, and we will look at that in the next edition of this blog.
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