First Heart Transplant

It probably seems strange to feature a heart transplant on this blog about Bible translation in Africa. Unlikely as it may seem, there are two links between the two; the first being Africa the second being an African language.

Groote Schuur Hospital

Those of you old enough to remember the first heart transplant may have forgotten that it took place in Africa, South Africa to be precise. It was performed by Dr. Christiaan Neethling Barnard at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town in December 1967.

The second link is language; in this case Afrikaans. That language was created with the influx of a large number of Dutch settlers beginning in 1652. They spoke Dutch, of course. Because they were influential, people around them started learning and speaking Dutch, albeit imprefectly. Plus, the settlers encountered plants and animals for which there was no Dutch name, so their names were borrowed from native languages. These forces eventually simplified and changed the Dutch spoken by the settlers creating a new language, Afrikaans, which is now spoken about 10 million people and is one of the official languages of South Africa.

Dr. Barnard grew up speaking Afrikaans at home and school. In fact, he did all his primary and secondary schooling in Africaans, only learning English once he got to university. So the first heart transplant was done in Africa by a man whose mother tongue was a language of Africa and who did much of his schooling in that language.

In light of this, it is rather silly to think that Africans would be better off to abandon their languages and speak English. Instead, I predict that they will do like Dr. Barnard and speak both – one for matters of family, community and the heart, and the other for work and their professional life. In fact, I know many Africans who do exactly that. And like Dr. Barnard and my African friends, that won’t hurt their professional achievements, not even one little bit.

So Bible translations in African languages will be continue to be widely used including by those who master English perfectly in their professional lives. In other words, they won’t undergo a language transplant.

Bibleless Peoples part 4 – Cut off

Children in Ghana

This is the forth in my series on the bibleless peoples. Because the bibleless peoples are so varied, what I write about them in not true for all of them. It may also be true of peoples who are not bibleless.

Nevertheless, most bibleless peoples are cut off. For example, they tend to be among the poorest of the poor. Their children struggle in school. They have more health problems and shorter life spans. Because they speak languages which are mostly unwritten, they are cut off from information, including the revelation in the Bible. They have no way to find out about something, or to verify what they hear. No courses are offered in the languages they speak and there may be no TV or radio programs.

I vividly remember interviewing pastors and learners in a literacy program for churches in Burkina Faso. When I asked one rural pastor why he enrolled his church in the program, he excitedly said that the members of his congregation who could not read were limited to attending and listening, while those who learned to read could help with children’s Sunday School or visit the sick and read the Bible to them. In other words, those who have no Bible or who can’t read it are cut of from even the most basic forms of lay ministry.

Ladies enrolled in the literacy classes excitedly reported that they could now read the Bible to their children. They were visibly thrilled.

Ghanaian woman reading Bible, Photo GILLBT, Rodney Ballard

A Ghanaian researcher reports that Christians who have the Bible in their language are much more likely to witness to their neighbors.

So we see that bibleless Christians, and those with a Bible who can’t read, are cut off from empowerment, including empowerment to carry out even the simplest forms of Christian ministry even when that is their heart’s desire.

Bibleless Peoples part 3 – Controversy

This is part three of a series on the bibleless peoples. In this part, I want to look at the political controversy that often surrounds the languages they speak.
Fear of disunity and conflict is one of the main drivers of political controversy over language. Some people worry that having different communities speaking different languages will result in tensions between those communities that will eventually create enough conflict to tear a country apart. That is the view from the national level. People with this view will sometimes propose that everyone in the country speak the same language.

The view from within a small language community in a nation is very different. They often hear the proposals that there be only one language as a threat – not to their language but to their very identity and existence. So they often react with opposition to the proposals.

Ironically, proposals that there be only one language often create the very political tensions they are designed to end. Recently this exact scenario was played out in India when a prominent person proposed that all India should speak one language. Opposition from those whose mother tongue is another language was strong and swift. Even when they already spoke the proposed language! They said it was an attempt to enslave them and “a war cry” against them. The controversy continued even after the proposal was backtracked. So a proposal made to create unity created tensions instead. Something similar happened over omitting a language on a plaque.

To understand the political reaction against one-language proposals, we need to move away from understanding language as simply a means of communication. Instead, ethnic groups often use the individual threads of their language, their culture, their history, and their religion into weave a cloth that constitutes their identity. They perceive that they cannot lose any one thread, say language, without unraveling the whole cloth. So their language is not just their means of communication, but rather an integral and cherished part of who they are. For this reason, bibleless peoples often feel that their identity is threatened when their language is threatened.

Professor B Y Quarshie says:

Local languages are not morphology and syntax, they are a people’s identity

And Professor Lamin Sanneh wrote:

Language [is] not merely a tool fashioned to achieve limited and temporary goals. It [is] also a dynamic cultural resource, reflecting the spirit of the people and illuminating their sense of values.

And a recent article in a Nigerian newspaper stated:

Language is more than spoken words. It is the bedrock of any cultural and traditional society. Take away the language, and the core spirit of heritage and history is lost.

Ghanaian with his Bible

People’s attachment to their language showed up recently in South Africa when the daughter of TV stars would only speak English and not her parents’ African language. Many South Africans criticized her for abandoning her true identity. They were fine with her speaking English, but thought she should speak her African language too. I could continue with unending examples of the fierce attachment people have to their language because it is part of their identity.

Language will probably always be a hot political issue given the competing demands of national unity and local identity. But the attachment people have to their language makes it a great medium for transmitting the Gospel. Those announcing the Gospel do themselves a great disfavor if they see language as divisive, or as only a utilitarian issue of communication rather than as a God-given door to peoples’ hearts.

We take the latter approach, and so we call this blog Heart Language.

Bibleless Peoples part 2, language myths

I recently read “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, Frederick Douglass’ autobiography. Douglass wrote it in 1845. It contained a number of words I did not know. Take this passage, for example.

His carriage-house contained three splendid coaches, three or four gigs, besides dearborns and barouches of the most fashionable style.

I had to look up gigs, dearborns, and barouches, having never had occasion to be around or talk about these types of horse-drawn wagons and coaches. I knew of covered wagons and stage coaches because I have seen those and heard them called by their names, but everything else was just a wagon to me.

Choir in Congo singing AIDS prevention song in their language

That brings me to bibleless peoples. They are often accused of having impoverished, substandard or unscientific languages. These accusations are bolstered by pointing out that the languages do not have words for modern things. But in Frederick Douglass’s day, even English did not have the word “microbe”. Was his language therefore impoverished? Was mine impoverished because I didn’t know barouches? Not having words for something is a silly way to judge someone’s language. Many common words today were unknown to Shakespeare and it is ridiculous to call the English he spoke and wrote impoverished or substandard. In fact, such accusations are misplaced for any language because languages adopt or invent new words for the things they encounter. Vocabulary is a function of context rather than a sign of adequacy or inadequacy. All languages can and do develop – acquiring new words as needed. Did you know that “vegan” wasn’t invented until 1944 and remained obscure for decades after that? When we were involved in translating AIDS information into Congo languages, we had to find ways to say HIV, AIDS, seropositive, virus and many other things. Those doing the translations always found good translations of all the terms and even had them approved by medical professionals.

Unfortunately, sometimes bibleless peoples believe the negative statements made about their languages. They can even believe that the lack of certain words will make it impossible to translate the Bible. Sometimes we have to convince church leaders who fear that the Bible will be degraded by translating it into “substandard” languages. It’s all part of mobilizing churches in Africa for Bible translation.

But when the translation produces the joy of salvation and the fruit of godly living, the language myths are often dispelled. Besides, dare we call any language “impoverished” in which God speaks to people?

Publications in many topics in Ghanaian languages