Saving Words
Neal Brinneman, who serves with JAARS information technology (IT), assists Bible translator Bev Dawson with her IT needs. Bev is a career missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators and has worked in Guyana with the Wapishana language since 1973. She relates her recent challenges:
In March 2005, robbers murdered Rich and Char Hicks and burned down their house in Guyana, South America. The Hicks were two of my coworkers on the Wapishana New Testament translation.
Fortunately, I had a copy on my computer of most of the translation Rich had worked on. Unfortunately, I had no copy of the dictionary he had spent years compiling. I did have a printed copy that was several years old, but I knew that Rich had hundreds of new words in his database.
Soon after the tragedy, Neal found a volunteer at JAARS and trained her how to type Wapishana words from the printed dictionary into a program designed for making dictionaries.
Later, six months after the murders, I located a CD with some of Rich’s old files. It was in a format that I didn’t know how to open, so I sent it to Neal. He not only opened it but was able to combine the data on the CD with the words recovered from the printed dictionary.
During the summer of 2008, Neal continued to build our dictionary database, using my computer files that contain the complete draft of the Wapishana New Testament and all other Wapishana texts—including more than 100 short stories written by new readers.
Neal could have trained me to do this, but since I now have the primary responsibility for finishing the translation of the New Testament, he chose to save me weeks of work by doing all this for me.
Because writing their own language is new to Wapishana speakers, they have pushed us for a dictionary to help them with spelling. They are thrilled to see how many words their language contains, as well as grammar like other languages. The dictionary also greatly increases the respect outsiders have for the Wapishana people and their language. God is using this contribution by the Hickses.
God is also bringing good out of the couple’s death. It rocked the whole area. Because Rich and Char willingly gave their lives for the translation, the Wapishana speakers who are now helping me translate have committed themselves to finishing the New Testament. Thus, they are taking ownership of the translation project for the first time.
