Amazonian Indians Connect by Internet to Florida-Based Bible Translators
For more information, contact:
Arthur Lightbody
JAARS Media Relations Officer
1-704-843-6048
arthur_lightbody@sil.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WAXHAW, N.C. — March 9, 2000 — When Titusville, Florida, residents Harold and Diana Green, translators with Wycliffe Bible Translators, read on their computer, “You have mail,” the message may be from a Palikur Indian in Brazil’s swampy humid Amazonian grasslands.
“Today,” Diana explains, “Aldiere Orlando, a 20-year-old Palikur future village chieftain, is preparing books for his own people.” Orlando is a co-translator with the Greens on the Palikur Old Testament.
The Greens worked 37 years in Brazil as linguists, translation consultants and literacy specialists. Before they returned to Florida, Harold and Diana trained several young Palikur men in translation principles and computer skills. Now, each morning Orlando boots up his computer. With a few keystrokes, he enters a high-tech world few Amazonian Indians know.
Other Palikur use the computer to record information about area ecology and the Palikur view of the universe. They also work on a Palikur-Portuguese bilingual dictionary, which will soon be available on the Internet.
An Internet connection links the Greens’ Florida home to a study center in Belem, a city near the mouth of the Amazon River. In Belem, a colleague with a telephone facilitates the Greens’ e-mail collaboration with the young translator. They look forward to the day when a satellite service can provide a direct link to Orlando’s village.
When the Greens began work in Brazil in 1965, the Palikur people were dying out. Only 800 of them lived in the Amazonian everglades, near the French Guiana border. Once numbered in the hundreds of thousands, disease, slave traders, intertribal warfare, alcohol abuse and violent feuds had decimated the group.
The people lived in fear, not only of their neighbors, but also of the jungle spirits. However, a few Palikur were hungry for a better life. They wanted to read the message of the Bible.
After setting up a simple home in the Amazonian everglades, the Greens learned the Palikur language and culture. As the patient villagers tutored them, they used phonetic symbols to write down the previously unwritten language. The Greens constructed an alphabet, analyzed the Palikur grammar system, and published primers to teach the Palikur how to read. In 1982 they finished the Palikur New Testament.
The Palikurs’ fear of jungle spirits diminished. The people determined to love and live at peace with one another. Revenge was replaced by forgiveness. The Palikur language is very much alive and the Palikur now number 1600.
Wycliffe Bible Translators, USA, is based in Orlando, Florida. Wycliffe translators work in 1,095 languages worldwide. JAARS Inc., as part of the Wycliffe family of organizations, provides technical services for linguistic research and Bible translation.
The Greens received help from JAARS in purchasing the computers needed for the Palikur translation effort. They also received JAARS language software and training in its use from JAARS.
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