Noah in Latege

1/4/09
It may be April Fool's day, but no joking, a small team finally made a start on translating the story of Noah. The schools here have a week's break so Fulbert has a little time to spare. He and Noline along with Albert and Alice, who are visiting from Franceville, came for a fairly intensive six hours studying the text of Genesis 6 and trying to render it in clear, natural Latege. It might not appear very difficult at first sight but how do you translate "ark" in an area that is hundreds of miles from the sea and with few lakes, certainly none of any size. There is a word for 'dug-out canoe' but even they are so rare most people don't know the word, and anyway it's rather hard to imagine Noah balancing all those animals in a dug-out! Likewise, there is no word for 'decks' or even 'storey' in an area where all buildings are just one storey. More surprisingly, they struggled even to find a word for 'roof'. I assure you houses here do have roofs but no-one knew the word – when you're building a house you either simply 'thatch' it or, in recent times, 'tin' it. We have now found two words but they are from distinct dialects and it's far from sure that many younger people will recognise either.
Fulbert and Noline will come back for another session tomorrow, but Albert and Alice are returning to Franceville. After that it's not clear when anyone will have time to continue the translation. Pray that Fulbert will be able to give at least one or two more days during the up-coming school-break (they have another week off the last week of April – Not anymore they don't. I just got cancelled and therefore also our session). That might mean we finish at least the first draft, though we have some challenging key terms to discuss (covenant, altar, sacrifice..). Pray also that we can find ways to get more people involved in the work in the not-too-distant future.