Month: January 2019

Stacey and I have chosen to live in a village here in Cameroon and work directly with a single people group: the Kwakum. The longer we are here, the more we are thankful we have chosen this method. Just the other day my neighbor Patrice told me that several people in the same village died at the same time. I asked what happened and he told me that there was mbɔsɔ cyɛti, which they would translate into French as mauvais médicament ‘bad medicine’. I asked some follow-up questions, because I wanted to better understand what happened. I asked if it was tromadol, a…

From of old no one has heard or perceived by ear no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. Isaiah 64:4 Can you imagine what it would have been like to be there when English was first codified? When people first were able to read the language that they had spoken their whole life? Well…we can! We are very pleased to announce that Kwakum has shed its label of an “oral-only” society. Today, this group of 10,000 people in Eastern Cameroon now have an official, recognized alphabet. The alphabet meeting we had…

The first time we met members from one particular village, after we explained that we wanted to write down their language and translate the Bible, said, “If you don’t pick the letter for the sound “s” that we want, we won’t touch your Bible.” These words echo in my mind as THE meeting to choose an alphabet approaches. This Tuesday, in a Kwakum village called Beul, representatives from every Kwakúm village will be coming to decide which letters they want to represent the sounds of their language. I have been indirectly preparing for this meeting for years and intensely preparing…

What is discourse analysis? How does it relate to Bible translation? Is it even important?