scripturient

scripturient: (adj) having a consuming passion to write

pronunciation: skrip- tUr- E- ent

Today I learned a new word I had never heard before with my old friend who is, like me, an English teacher. I have been immersed in Scriptures since childhood, and am equally passionate about writing since I first learned to read (and consequently, write), and know at least a dozen words derived from the Latin scriptura in both English and Portuguese, but was unfamiliar with the adjective that perhaps describes my past and present goal: scripturient. Thanks, Nina Woody Morway, for defining the passion that consumes me as well as significant others in my life!

Here in Brazil day before yesterday was National Readers’ Day, also a definition I had never heard about, though every day at our house has always been a day for reading and writing. Many friends posted comments about the books they had recently read; a few ventured to mention the books they futurely wish to write, and my mind was boggled with thoughts and ideas and plans and mental outlines and entering and deleting a glut of stories and concepts my fingers (or word-processor, when push comes to shove) are too slow to write. Got letters from a couple of thinking friends and discovered that it was my reading-thinking-corresponding aunt’s birthday, so I wrote to her and was immediately rewarded with her delightful communication. And began to consider how relational reading and writing really are.

Have a facebook friend who is a writer of romantic, slightly steamy (if someone can steam only slightly) novels. I don’t even remember how she got on my list, but along with my thirty-something author friends – mostly Christian thinkers and doers – who write serious popular non-fiction, this writer lightens me up with her humorous posts. Her relation to books is downright idolatrous, and her books are about relations – love and hate – between glamorous men and women, but you really can’t say her writing is relational in the sense that the Biblical God of Scriptures wrote, or people who believe Him write about the Word in flesh.

The wisest king in the world, author and compiler of the ancient wisdom of Israel, chose to call himself simply Koheleth, Teacher or Preacher. He “searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true”, describing the words of the wise as “goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails – given by one Shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:10). But in the same text he warned of the vanity of anything given in  addition to the words of the one Shepherd: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” and after all had been said, concluded that humankind’s whole duty was to “fear God and keep his commandments, for God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil”.

There is much argument as to when or even where another wise man lived and wrote (or was subject of deep drama laden with dialogue from beginning to end. But the oft-repeated declaration of faith he left for all generations of Old and New Testament believers,

I know that my Redeemer lives

and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed,

yet in my flesh I will see God;

I myself will see him with my own eyes-- I, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!

is sandwiched between a scripturient declaration writers like you and me wish for:

Oh, that my words were recorded,

that they were written on a scroll,

that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead,

or engraved in rock forever! (Job 19:23-25)

Scripture speaks of writing as more than documenting a covenant, though the everlasting covenant is written in hearts and stone and from the beginning of human history “inscribed by the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18; 34:27). As God’s image-bearers, His people were to “write down for yourselves this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it...” (Deuteronomy 31:19). Not just the songs and poems,

but also the ethics of “love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man (Proverbs 3:3).

The revelation to the prophets, whether by Habakkuk, who wrote disturbing questions in Judah right before the Babylonian invasion by Nebucadnezzar, or Daniel in exile, or John on Patmos, was to be written visibly – as a royal message and a readable road sign: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay (Habakkuk 2:2).

Jesus Christ himself commissioned John to write what he had seen, what is now, and what will take place later (Revelation 1:19) and finishes off with a promise:  "I am making everything new!" affirming: "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."  Rev. 21:5

Of course, we scripturient writers, whether passionately driven or leniently procrastinators, do not own the words of God nor write anything close to inspired Scripture. But the most prolific writer in the New Testament compares us to letters – a writing genre with which he was quite adept – as he wrote to the Corinthian believers:

You show that you are a letter from Christ,

the result of our ministry, written not with ink

but with the Spirit of the living God,

not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Paul gives Christian readers and writers words of trust and competence, of unsurpassed beauty and glory and competence – goals we seek in writing the truth (even through fiction), writing well, ministering in a new spiritual covenant: “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant-- not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life...” that breaks into poetry:

If the ministry that was engraved in letters on stone,

came with glory, so that the Israelites

could not look steadily at the face of Moses

because of its glory, fading though it was,

will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?

If the ministry that condemns men is glorious,

how much more glorious

is the ministry that brings righteousness!

For what was glorious has no glory now

in comparison with the surpassing glory.

And if what was fading away came with glory,

how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face

to keep the Israelites from gazing at it

while the radiance was fading away...

But whenever anyone turns to the Lord,

the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the Spirit,

and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory,

are being transformed into his likeness

with ever-increasing glory,

which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3.3-18).

We really cannot say such a text is taken out of context when applied to a modern Christian writer’s scripturient desire! May 2014 find us writing with passion, truth and love, good metaphors and profound simplicity!

Elizabeth Gomes

TRANSLATION -- COMMUNICATION FOR TRANSFORMATION

How many books I’ve translated from English into Portuguese? Lost count! Well, if I sit down and concentrate, I’m sure the numbers will show up on what has been one of my major jobs for the last forty years (besides being a pastor’s wife and mother of three, voracious reader, Bible student, English teacher, cook and dishwasher, sometime gardener, not such a neat cleaner and a few other mundane activities). Lots of experience still leaves me stymied with some texts. I don’t make the same mistake of translating a Christian sex education book for pre-teens (Ken Taylor’s Almost Twelve) substituting “Eustachian tubes” for “Fallopian tubes” as I did in the early seventies. I’ve had several ear surgeries since and don’t mix them there  tubes with those of the reproductive system. Bilingual from the time I learned to talk, having majored in English and Portuguese, I thought translation would be a cinch. The editor caught my mistake in the galley proof. So began my experience as book translator.

That first publishing house had a monthly meeting for translators and editors, which contributed to smoothing out and improving most texts. These meetings with peers forced us to go beyond formulaic translation, using our imagination to produce quality work.

I gained writing experience in the process—often re-writing ten times and still not getting it to “sound” right. I also became immersed in published works by established writers, learning to distinguish good writing from bad. I have always learned about writing from translation. For instance, my first attempts were with a few chapters of textbooks that classmates at seminary had trouble reading. I translated almost word for word, resulting in an incomprehensible Portuguese text that caused as much trouble as the English original. A couple of medical students asked me to put a few chapters of their dense textbook (where I had to consult a medical dictionary at almost every paragraph) into readable Portuguese, on which I labored almost a month, and they, “in gratitude, paid me with a box of chocolates”! À propos, the difference in payment between secular and Evangelical publishers is still humongous, so we do Christian books as ministry, not money making. The money made is minimal.

Translation in history

From the time of Babel in Genesis to the flames of Pentecost in Acts, language, meaning and understanding another cultural context have moved and revolutionized all people that on earth do dwell… The drama and dialogue between Joseph, his brothers and all others concerned was done through translation, because Joseph hid his true identity until his youngest brother had arrived in Egypt (Genesis 42-47).

When young Jewish noblemen were transported to Babylonian captivity, besides the well-known story of refusing the rich food of a pagan king, physical transposition and cultural translation is an even greater emphasis: “young men in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans... God gave them knowledge and skill in all literature and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams” (Daniel 1.17). The book of Daniel also relates a divine translation narrative in which the untranslated words MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN spoke of the doom of Belshazzar’s Chaldean rule (Dan 5.17-31).

Bible translation

Ever hear of the lady who wrote to a Missionary agency saying “I never got beyond eighth grade and don’t know nothing but English, but if you can spare me an English-Spanish dictionary, the Lord will help me translate the Bible into Spanish to help all those Mexicans be saved”! Translation work is as varied as the types of texts to be rendered into a new language. Guess that is why it took over seventy scholars to translate the Bible from Hebrew into Greek in second century BC. I would say that producing the Septuagint was one of the major cultural-religious feats of the interbiblical period. This translation of the Old Testament plus Apocrypha was only translated into English by Sir Lancelot Brenton in 1851. Jerome (347-420) took twenty years to translated both old and New Testaments from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek (using Origen (185-254)’s translation of that Alexandrian VXX as well as the Torah, Neviim and Ketuvim in original Hebrew, and koiné Greek for the New), producing the Vulgate translation into Latin which the Bible Christians had in hand (though only a few erudite people had access to it) for the next few centuries. The birth of the Reformation could be described as a season of translations: Erasmus of Rotterdam translated from Greek into Latin. Meanwhile, Martin Luther used Erasmus’s Greek-Latin translation to translate the New Testament into German (1522), and by 1532 had finished translating the entire Bible. This translation helped develop a standard for the German language and added several principles to the art of translation. William Tyndale lived for a time under the wing of Luther and, stimulated by the German reformer, produced the first Bible translated wholly into the English language. Then in 1611, James I of England (James VI of Scotland) ordered a new translation, which was to be accurate and true to the originals. He appointed fifty of the nation's finest language scholars and approved rules for carefully checking the results, insisting that the translation use old familiar terms and names and be readable in the idiom of the day. This was to be made readily available to be read in a land where seventy per cent of the population was illiterate and a single book cost the equivalent of a year’s salary for a humble laborer or even a tradesman! A good part of the King James Version of the Bible (1611) was actually translated by Tyndale. Very quickly translations into almost all the modern languages were being made and the Bible was spread throughout the world. Today there are translations of the Bible in over two thousand languages!

Translation as transmitting the Gospel

"Translation is the church's birthmark as well as its missionary benchmark," say Lamin Sanneh, of Yale University. "The church would be unrecognizable or unsustainable without it... Translation is profoundly related to the original conception of the Gospel: God, who has no linguistic favorites, has determined that we should all have the Good News in our native tongue." The writer of Ecclesiastes said there is no limit to the writing of books (Ecc 12.12), but that was translated from Hebrew. Without translation it could not have reached English, Portuguese, Swahili or Chinese ears, as it has for hundreds of other languages. Gods Spirit made the Good News understandable to “devout men, from every nation under heaven” – the multitude came together, were confused, everyone heard his own language spoken by ignorant Galileans (from Acts 2 throughout the entire New Testament). Some of the sharers of Glad Tidings were well-versed in  Scripture and secular literature (Paul, Apolos), but others such as Peter had been sub-literate until the Holy Spirit invested them with power to preach, teach and live out the Word. Communicating God’s Word turned people and their world upside down!

Modern translations into previously unknown languages

Several of our friends are missionaries involved in translating the Word into native Brazilian languages, the result of dozens of sending churches, seven missionary agencies, 66 translators and more than 150 native speakers directly involved in the translation process. There are two complete Bibles (in Wai-Wai  and Guarani-Mbyá) and 32 New Testaments translated into indigenous languages in our country alone. A great part of these translators have difficulty simultaneously dedicating their time to translation and evangelization – even though the only means of evangelizing will be through the written word which they produce. It usually takes over twenty years to translate the Bible to native tongues, and these may be read by a population of three hundred to three thousand people! Not what you would call a popular edition!

Modern Translation foibles

I admire those dedicated translators mentioned above, but confess falling short, by far, of their abilities and goals. Two Western languages with similar enough cultures suffice for me. I have done a couple of translations from other languages (French and Spanish, and in a pinch could try my hand in German), but English and Portuguese keep me on my toes and my arthritic fingers to the keyboard. Though English is an Anglo-Germanic tongue and Portuguese Neo-Latin, about 70% of the vocabulary used  in English texts is of Latin origin, so it’s relatively easy to translate into Portuguese – though some words with the same origin took on different or even contrasting meanings. “Exquisite” in English is uniquely marvelous, while “esquisito” in Portuguese is strange, weird. ”Pretend” in English is “make believe, fake” while in Portuguese “pretender” is synonym for “intend, plan”. Even in the same language, some things are interpreted differently: as an English teacher in Brazil, I was valued for being a “native speaker”, but when I wrote about “sharing the gospel to the natives” I was definitely politically and vocationally incorrect! The germ of this blog was planted by observing my peers’ translations – even having two cultures one can make serious mistakes, such as:

• In a book about Augustine, where the author wrote “be content” the translator wrote “be chaste” and mixed continuance with continence – though the old saint was dealing with sexual purity in his Confessions, the modern author was talking about being content (happy) in the Lord’s commandments, which surely implies all of that but was not the gist of the book in English.

• A translator used a computer-generated translation for an important document on airport enhancement and support, declaring that the suite of computers which commanded airplane traffic control  “wore a modern suit”(“usou um terno moderno”)!

• The translator must have thought of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings when he was doing The God who is there’s “the ring of truth” into Portuguese, because he translated into “o anel da verdade” -- substituting the idea of bells pealing to announce truth with a golden circle to be placed on a finger!

• For every time the original author mentioned that someone was raised in a God-fearing home,  a recent translation I saw had rendered into “levantado”, or “lifted ”, (So and so lifted his good house) --changing the sense and making the translation nonsense.

A dictionary-sized book could be written about translations that do not make sense, or contradict common sense, or lose tract of what the original author really meant to say. But as long as people are diverse, translations will be needed. I would like to see more Brazilian authors published here, because communication – whether Biblical or biological -- is clearest within the cultural context of the people being addressed. For me, translation was a beginning place, an initial interpretation of ideas to another group. It should also be my end, in whatever language I write, to communicate and interpret from one framework of thinking to another – relaying the truth of the Written and the living Word of God to people like me, in order to understand God’s eternal truth in fresh language, so that “all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7.14 NKJ).

Elizabeth Gomes