On Friday June 29th, David and I arrived at the DFW airport, back from five incredible weeks in Cameroon. The first half of our time in Cameroon was a blur of travel, interviews, and meeting new friends as we visited five language communities. We then returned to the capital city and attended the Wycliffe Africa Area Conference. And as a final project before we left, we produced a promotional video for CABTAL, the Cameroonian Wycliffe organization.

Bakossi
The first place we visited was Tombel, the largest town of the Bakossi language community. The Bakossi translation is a CABTAL project and is staffed entirely by Bakossi speakers. The translation team has only a few books of the New Testament left to translate and hopes to have the project completed by the year 2011. But the community has not been content to just wait until the translation is finished. Many churches are sponsoring adult literacy classes so that people will be able to read the Bible when it is available. Community leaders have also successfully started mother tongue literacy programs in the local government and private schools. And, portions of Scripture that have been translated are already being used in church services.

Joseph Nkwelle, one of the translators on the project, told me the story of the first time he read the translated Scripture in his church. Previously, all Scripture reading had been in English, and even though some members of the congregation knew English, Joseph said that they were not able to truly understand the Scripture in English. Joseph wanted to get the Scripture reading just right, so even though he was one of the best readers of Bakossi, he spent two weeks mastering the passage he was to read. Finally, the appointed Sunday came, and he read the passage. As soon as he had finished, spontaneous applause erupted from the congregation. Joseph was surprised because the congregation had never clapped for a Scripture reading before. He said that after the service, old women embraced him, men were smiling, and several people told him they felt the Bakossi Scripture should have come sooner.

While in Tombel, we were also privileged to listen to several songs by a choir association called BAPRESCA. BAPRESCA was formed by choir members who wanted to write and sing gospel songs in their mother tongue. The association has become incredibly popular, with over fifty groups totaling more than 1,500 members.

Ndop Cluster
From Tombel, we journeyed north to stay with the Groves, a Canadian family living in the village of Bambalang on the Ndop Plain. The Ndop Plain is home to ten related languages, and because of these languages’ similarities, a cluster approach has been chosen to speed the translation process. The plan is for several teams to do an in-depth study of some of the languages spoken on the plain and then use the lessons learned from those languages to expand the project to the other languages. In addition to staying with the Groves, we were also able to visit the Blackwells, who are from Ireland, in Bamunka, and the Hamms, who are also from Canada, in Bafanji. Right now, the teams are nearing completion of alphabet systems for the languages they are working in and plan to begin the translation process some time in the next few months.

One day, we accompanied the Groves to a very special meeting with the local language committee, which is a group of Bambalang residents who are giving the Groves guidance as they develop a writing system the Bambalang language. The purpose of this particular meeting was to show the committee a draft of the alphabet and get feedback on it. The Groves explained the chart and showed which letters stood for which sounds. The people in the committee could already read English, so they caught on very quickly. In fact, during that meeting we were able to see several members read their own language for the very first time!

Even though these three teams are from Europe and North America, they hope to eventually transition most of the translation effort to local people. We met two men named Pius and Novethan from Bambalang who are already working with the Groves. Novethan and Pius have been friends since they were very young, and they were both fishermen before God called them to pastoring and Bible translation. Since receiving that call, both have studied hard to prepare for the translation project. Novethan graduated last year from the Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary in Ndu with a Bachelor of Theology degree and has already begun pastoring a church in Bambalang. Pius started the same program a year after Novethan did, and we were able to attend his graduation during our visit. Next year, Pius’ wife will also graduate from the same seminary.

Another highlight of the Ndop Cluster visit for me was discovering that all three teams have begun to use Fieldworks Language Explorer, the program I worked on last summer. Seeing them use parts of the program that I had written was a great encouragement, and I was even able to answer some questions the teams had about using the program.

Central Ring Cluster
The final translation project we visited was the Babanki project, a part of the Central Ring Cluster. The Babanki project is another CABTAL project. Like the Bakossi project, it is being run entirely by Africans. They already have a finished alphabet and are just beginning translation. They hope the translation process will go faster because they are able to use a computer program called Adapt It. Adapt It works by taking a finished translation in a related language and assisting a bilingual speaker to translate the text. In this case, the team is using a New Testament written in Kom. Kom is a language similar to Babanki, but most Babanki speakers cannot understand it. Adapt It goes through the completed translation word by word, asking the bilingual speaker what the Babanki equivalent of each word is. The program also remembers previous translations and can give suggestions on how to translate a word that has been translated before.

Adapt It provides a good starting point, but a word-by-word translation does not sound natural to a native speaker of Babanki. So, after a selection has been drafted with Adapt It, the text goes to a translation team. This team checks the translation to make sure it is accurate and sounds natural in Babanki. From there, the draft goes to a translation committee which does final checks.

We were able to see Adapt It in action and have posted a video of the process to David’s blog: Babanki Bible Translation.

Conference
We returned to Yaounde just in time to attend the Wycliffe Africa Area conference. This was the first conference for all of the African-led Wycliffe organizations. One of the major themes at the conference was church mobilization. The leaders at the conference all saw increasing church involvement as a major priority. They believe that Bible translation in Africa has changed from something that people from the West come in and do to something that Africans can and should do for themselves. They want the African Church to share this vision and to support it with their finances and involvement.

Post-conference
We brought a video camera with us on the trip, and much to my surprise, I ended up being the primary cameraman. The purpose of bringing the camera was to shoot short video segments to post on David’s blog. However, when we arrived back in Yaounde for the conference, the CABTAL General Director, Dr. Kenmogne, asked us to produce a promotional video for CABTAL to use when they visit seminaries in Cameroon. We were concerned that we might not be able to do it because we had not shot footage with a longer video in mind and we had only a week to produce the video. To further complicate matters, we started to have serious computer problems including the failure of our primary hard drive. Miraculously, we were still able to finish the video before we left, and CABTAL was very happy with the result.

Both the CABTAL video (Join the Move) and the shorter videos about the places we visited are available on David’s blog: The Translation Beat. We plan to post more videos in the coming weeks.

Tea
And what would a Wycliffe update from me be without a mention of tea? On the way to Ndu to see Pius’ graduation, I was pleasantly surprised when Dan Grove mentioned that there was a tea plantation on the way. I have been wanting to see one in person ever since I got interested in tea. So when we got to the plantation, we stopped, and I was able to look around. It was beautiful! And a few days later, I was even able to find a bag of tea that was grown on that very plantation. I’m enjoying some of it right now as I write this letter.

The Future
During the next couple weeks, I will be writing some articles for Wycliffe International based my experiences in Cameroon. After that, I will begin attending the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, which starts on the 19th. As I talked with people in Cameroon about the work they were doing, I have become even more excited about studying linguistics. The courses will be challenging, but I am looking forward to them.

Thank you for your prayers. May the Lord bless you.