As the translators begin their workshop on
Galatians 4-6 and Ephesians 1 in Arop village this week, two primary things are on their minds: translating and typesetting.
Please pray for
* Careful and insightful work as they
draft these four chapters.
* Keen eyes and sharp minds as they
revise earlier chapters of Galatians.
* Wisdom as they work through the long list of
typesetting decisions I have asked them to make so I can finish setting up the "
immediate typesetting" software and complete a typesetting instruction manual for them.
* Good
health for all as they gather from many different villages.
*
Diligence as they do the
tedious work of making sure everything in their older translations is ready for typesetting.
* Translators who have
not yet arrived and may be confused about the start date for the workshop. Communication has been difficult lately.
Some things to
praise the Lord with us for
* Emil and I and our other consultants have the Arop translation of
Gal 4-6 and Eph 1 ready for this workshop.
* The
"immediate" typesetting software is ready for us to use for diglot publications with pictures and even long footnotes. Praise the Lord with us for the men who built
this amazing tool and who continue to make improvements as we suggest them.
* On 8/20 Bonnie and I celebrated
38 years of marriage.
* The
safe delivery of Lily Grace Nystrom, and a
safe trip back to WI for Bonnie.
Family update:
My mom is finding breathing and walking more difficult each day.
Our plate is full, but it's all tasty. Thank you for your partnership with us in it!
Serving our King together,
John Nystrom (& for Bonnie)
P.S. An apology about "watching sausage being made."
In
the July 2nd ALT, I showed some of the messy parts of the translation process and compared it to watching sausage being made. In doing so, I baffled some of you who did not get the metaphor. It's a translator's job, and any writer's job, to know what his audience will understand by what he writes. I failed you by overestimating how widely that metaphor is known. If you
look it up online, you can find this concise explanation:
"If something is like watching sausages getting made, unpleasant truths about it emerge that make it much less appealing. The idea is that if people watched sausages getting made, they would probably be less fond of them."
My point was that we all enjoy a beautiful translation, but producing one includes a lot of work behind the scenes that a non-translator might not expect, and that isn't very glamorous. I'm sorry I lost some of you behind when I used that metaphor. This is one type of problem we're looking for when we check translations for comprehension, so I should know better. Sorry about that!
