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| (Photo: BETH KNOLL/The Jackson Sun) |
Fifteen years ago, Bill Patterson was a pastor in Mexico when he felt God place a burden in his heart to translate the Bible.
Fourteen Bible translations later, Patterson — now the president of a worldwide missions organization — finds himself in West Tennessee to help translate the New Testament into one of the most difficult languages.
Patterson, a child of missionaries, said he was once like many Christians in the United States who believe that all people can read the Bible in their own language. However, about 6,500 language groups across the globe are without a complete translation, and 3,000 languages lack the Bible in its entirety.
“I was unaware that there were so many language groups that didn’t have a Bible,” Patterson said. “Granted, most of those language groups are not the major language groups around the world. But if you only speak one language, and your language doesn’t have a Bible — you may have the opportunity to come across someone who can tell you the Gospel, but you aren’t going to be able to grow spiritually. You aren’t going to be able to learn more about God on your own.”
Patterson said he had many unique opportunities growing up to learn an array of languages. He began learning Greek when he was 2, he said, as his father was a Greek professor. By the time Patterson was 5, he began studying Portuguese, and in college he learned Hebrew. He also speaks Spanish, as well as some Mongolian, Hindi, French and Telugu.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t realize that was going to be a benefit later in life,” he said. “I had no idea.”
While visiting a friend in Mongolia about a decade ago, Patterson met a longtime translator named Oyumaa — who, like most Mongolians, simply goes by one name. Oyumaa had worked for years as a linguist, translating for the United Nations and a variety of organizations.
A new believer in Christ, Oyumaa had been helping Patterson’s friend — who also is her son-in-law — translate Christian books into Mongolian. But when Patterson asked her to help him revise the Mongolian Bible, her answer was quickly, “no.”
“When I was saved, I found out that there are no (books) about Christians, about Christianity … and I started translating these small teaching materials for prison ministry, for youth ministry and for children’s church,” said Oyumaa, who speaks Mongolian, English, Russian, and some French and Buliat. “When Bill came to me, I thought, ‘I can translate any book, but not the Bible.’”
Oyumaa noted that, as a young Christian, she initially did not feel qualified to take on such a great task as translating God’s word. In addition, she knew that translating the Bible was unlike translating other books, as no words should be lost in the translation.
A year later, Patterson was able to see Oyumaa again — and this time, Oyumaa decided to help with project.
The Mongolians received the first Bibles in their language in 1997, just five years after the country opened its doors to Christianity, Patterson said. An American missionary commissioned three new members of his congregation to work on the translation, which was completed in about three years.
Working from the English New American Standard Version, the translators did their best to make sense of a book they hardly knew. But according to one of the men who worked on the project — and who Patterson later met — the Mongolian translation was filled with errors.
“One of the men, who is now a pastor — he begged the missionary not to print it,” Patterson said. “He said that there were many things that he did not understand when he was first translating … so he just did the best that he could. But after having spent three years working on it, he had better ideas how it should be translated.”
The Bible was still printed, however, and what resulted was a Bible that was disjointed at best, Patterson said. Between 35,000 to 40,000 Christians are now in Mongolia, he noted, and they have been told for 21 years that the Bible translation they have is incomplete and error-filled.
“I want to make sure when we do this, that we do it right,” Patterson said. “And it’s a little bit of a complicated process. But God will help us.”
Patterson and Oyumaa began working on the Mongolian New Testament six and a half years ago in Mongolia, tackling the project one word at a time. The duo set up a station with several computers and a variety of reference books — ranging from dictionaries to commentaries — to help them through the passages
In May, Oyumaa moved to Middleton, in West Tennessee, for health treatments, Patterson said. Rather than putting the project on hold, he and his family decided to move their translating headquarters to Middleton as well, where the duo have worked for the past few months.
On his computer screens, Patterson has the working form of the Mongolian translation, as well as the Greek and Hebrew versions of the Scriptures. Oyumaa looks at the Mongolian and Russian translations of the Bible on her screens, and together they review each verse to find the most accurate way to state God’s words.
Classified as one of the five most difficult languages in the world, Mongolian presents unique challenges to Bible translation, Patterson said. A word like “brother,” for instance, does not have a literal translation in Mongolian, which only has words for “older brother” or “younger brother.” When translating verses concerning Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Patterson said, he and Oyumaa have to figure out whether Lazarus was older or younger — or if that information is even known.
The duo have a variety of programs to aid in their search for accuracy, Patterson noted, including searches to find the popular meaning of a certain word in different periods of time. They also have a program to allow them to see how a word has been translated in a number of languages to find ways to translate difficult passages.
Patterson said he hopes more Christians will undertake translation projects — not for financial gain, but so that God’s word might be known.
“My greatest hope for this translation project is that people who want to know the truth of God’s word will be able to access that truth,” Patterson said. “When people know the truth of the word of God, they have the opportunity and responsibility to act on what they have just now understood.”
Source:http://www.jacksonsun.com/
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