[Oe List ...] Gullah Bible Translation

[LAURELCG@aol.com]

forwarded by Jann McGuire, home from Copper Canyon.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gullah29dec29,1,3516228

.story?page=4&coll=la-headlines-nation

>From the Los Angeles Times


COLUMN ONE

Gospel According to Gullah

In the Sea Islands off South Carolina, descendants of slaves help translate

the Bible into the rich language of their ancestors.

 By Stephanie Simon

 Times Staff Writer


 December 29, 2005


 ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. ‹ The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.


 No matter how often he read Psalm 23, Emory Campbell never could understand

that line. "I shall not want: What does that mean?" he'd ask himself.


 Then he joined a project to translate the Bible into the language of his

ancestors ‹ the language of slaves who toiled for centuries in rice paddies

off the Carolina coast.


 That first line became: "De Lawd me shephud. A hab ebryting wa A need." I

have everything I need.


 It reminded Campbell, 64, of his grandmother's way of talking, earthy and

frank and deep-down resonant. "Yes, indeed," Campbell said. " 'I have

everything I need.' That made sense to me."


 Campbell had always considered himself above the slave language, known as

Gullah. As a boy, he giggled at his grandma's speech. In college, he

considered her "dem" and "dat" and "dey" a brand of ignorance. Psalm 23

opened his eyes to Gullah's riches.


 He would spend the next two decades struggling to make the word of God

sound like his grandmother.


 The result ‹ De Nyew Testament ‹ was unveiled here last month at an annual

festival to celebrate Gullah culture. Twenty-six years in the making, the

Gullah gospel was written by descendants of slaves under the direction of

traveling missionaries.


 As a tool for evangelizing, it's not that efficient. No more than 10,000

people speak Gullah as their primary language; most are elderly and isolated

on the Sea Islands, a chain off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and

Florida. Perhaps another 250,000 coastal residents lapse into Gullah now and

then among friends.


 The small market doesn't trouble the missionaries who devote their lives to

such projects. They consider it their calling to bring the Scripture to

every tongue around the globe: to the 4,000 Africans who speak Igo, to the

3,000 South Americans who speak Chachi, to the 1,200 Pacific Islanders who

speak Angaatiya.


 "It's my vocation. It's my passion," said David Frank, a linguist who

helped finish the Gullah project.


 When the Bible is not available in their "heart language," even the most

devout Christians see it "more as an icon" than a meaningful message from

God, Frank said. "They know the Scripture is something you have to have, but

they have given up on the idea of understanding it."


 Before coming here, Frank and his wife, Lynn, spent 17 years translating

the Bible into a Creole spoken only on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

Like other Bible translators who travel the globe, the Franks do not draw a

salary; instead, they solicit support from churches and individuals.


 They've built a core group of 15 donors who pledge $10 to $500 a month. Two

Bible translation firms collect funds on the Franks' behalf: the Summer

Institute of Linguistics in Dallas and Wycliffe Bible Translators in

Orlando, Fla. Both organizations are nonprofit and donor-driven.


 Over the last 70 years, Wycliffe and the Summer Institute have translated

the Bible into 611 languages. Their linguists launch a new translation every

four days, on average. Some jump in not knowing a word of the language

they've committed to translating. They rely on faith, and on the goodwill of

locals. If they can find publishers, they may print portions of the Bible as

they complete them; a full New Testament translation takes 15 to 20 years.


 The Gullah project started inauspiciously.


 Veteran Bible translators Pat and Claude Sharpe arrived in the Sea Islands

in 1979. After years abroad, their health had forced them home, but they

weren't ready to retire. They loved the beguiling slips of land in the Sea

Islands, with their glinting marshes and moss-draped oaks and tangy ocean

breezes to cut the humid air.


 The Sharpes were also fascinated with Gullah culture, which is rooted in

the fishing and farming communities of 17th-century West Africa.


 Plantation owners began importing slaves about 400 years ago to work in the

cotton fields, rice paddies and oyster beds of these lush islands.


 Because they arrived speaking many different African languages, the slaves

had to develop a way of communicating with one another. The islands were so

isolated that Gullah never evolved toward standard English.


 Some scholars speculate Gullah (also called Geechee) was a language of

defiance ‹ a way for slaves to talk without their masters understanding.

Others see it as a purely practical tool for communication.


 At once lyrical and guttural, Gullah is a fast-paced, animated tongue. It

sounds a bit like the modern African American vernacular known as Ebonics,

but scholars say Gullah is a distinct language. (That determination rests on

several factors, including the simple fact that most English speakers

couldn't understand a native Gullah speaker in conversation.)


 By the time the Sharpes arrived, Gullah speakers had learned to be ashamed

of their native tongue. Teachers rapped their knuckles when they let slip a

"dey." Outsiders, even fellow African Americans, mocked them.


 So locals tried to persuade the Sharpes to drop the translation. "We told

them we would not do it," said Ardell Greene, 54, a retired executive

secretary.


 Her grandparents and parents spoke Gullah at home, but taught her never to

use it in the outside world. The idea of a Gullah Bible embarrassed Greene.

Put "Jedus" and the "Lawd" and "Me Fada" on paper?


 "People would laugh at us," she recalled telling the Sharpes.


 The couple refused to give up. They had spent decades translating the

gospels into Bolivian and Panamanian dialects. Now they dragged out

linguistics texts to convince the islanders that Gullah was every bit as

worthy.


 They traced certain Gullah words ‹ including "buckra" for white man and

"oona" for the plural you ‹ to specific African tribes. They explained that

Gullah had influenced English through words such as "tote" (to carry),

"chigger" (flea) and "biddy" (chicken), and through songs such as the

campfire staple "Kumbaya" (which was sung in Gullah as "come by yah, my

Lawd").


 Campbell had feared that the Sharpes would be patronizing ‹ outsiders

clucking at the quaint ways of "black folk on an island," he said. "But this

looked like a scientific approach."


 In 1980, a year after the Sharpes arrived, Campbell took over as director

of the nonprofit Penn Center, a community organization for the Gullah people

on St. Helena Island.


 He planned to focus on economic development: improving housing, expanding

healthcare and fighting developers who were buying up Gullah farmland to

build luxury resorts such as those in nearby Hilton Head Island, S.C.


 Almost as soon as he took the job, however, Campbell found himself as a

host not only to the Sharpes but other linguists, historians and tourists

from the world over. All had come hoping to learn more about Gullah culture.


 Through their eyes, Campbell began to see the importance of preserving

Gullah craft, superstitions, song and even the language he had once been

ashamed to call his own. Within a few years, he had signed on to help with

the Bible translation, along with about a dozen other volunteers.


 Greene was among the first to sign up ‹ although she remained a skeptic

until the team visited Jamaica in 1985 for a conference on Bible

translation.


 "We stepped off the plane and everyone was black and everyone talked just

like us," she said. Suddenly, Gullah sounded dignified.


 "We were like, 'Whoa! This really is a language,' " said Greene, who is to

be ordained next summer as a minister.


 For the next 20 years, the translation proceeded slowly. Greene or one of

the other native speakers would sit down with the Bible and render a few

verses in Gullah.


 They'd take their efforts to the Sharpes' house, where as many as a dozen

islanders would debate revisions over a potluck of traditional Gullah dishes

‹ rice and beans, rice and shrimp, rice and greens. The Sharpes would check

the work against Creole translations and against Greek and Latin Bibles to

make sure the true meaning of the Scriptures came through.


 Gullah is an oral language; there's no dictionary, no grammar book, no

literature (though the language does appear in a few stories, including the

Br'er Rabbit tales). So the islanders had to rely on memory and instinct.

They made up spellings as they went along.


 They struggled to translate the lofty vocabulary of the King James Bible

into the very literal language of illiterate slaves.


 "Blaspheme" became "shrow slam pon": Throw slander upon.


 "Sanctify" was "mek um God own": Make them God's own.


 "The righteous" became "wa waak scraight wid God": Those who follow God's

path.


 "Grace" caused particular problems. In Gullah, the word is used in a narrow

context to mean the prayer before a meal. No one knew how to render its

broader meaning of an undeserved favor from God.


 The Sharpes suggested "merciful favor." Greene rejected it: No grandmother

she knew would say that. Finally, she came up with "blessin," as in, "We

pray dat God we Fada and e son Jedus Christ gwin gii we dey blessin."


 To check their work, the translators read verses aloud at senior centers.

They'd ask elders to listen for jarring rhythms or phrases that didn't make

sense. Then it would be back to the Sharpes' house for another round of

revisions.


 "Oh, my God, it was hard," said Vernetta Canteen, 61, a hotel telephone

operator.


 After hours haggling over how to say "grace" in Gullah, "it would be all

you could do just to drive yourself home," she said. "It was so mentally

draining; I don't think physical work could have been any harder."


 As the years passed and their health declined, the Sharpes retired to

Florida. The translation team conferred by phone and fax and occasional

visits. Canteen never doubted the efforts.


 "When you read the Bible in Gullah   it's like you're talking to God

one-on-one," she said. "I'd do it again, in a heartbeat."


 In 1994, the team released "De Good Nyews Bout Jedus Christ Wa Luke Write,"

or the Gospel according to Luke, to pique interest in the broader

translation effort. It sold 30,000 copies. But not all Gullah descendants

welcomed the project.


 "It's nothing but broken English," said Lula Mitchell Holmes, 82, a retired

teacher.


 Arthur Chisholm, a deacon at Ebenezer Baptist Church on St. Helena Island,

said he wouldn't think of using the Gullah Bible for worship, though he

leads a congregation of old-time Gullah families.


 "You want to learn the one that speaks God's word in the King's English,"

said Chisholm, 54. "I'd stick to that."


 Frank, the linguist, arrived in the Sea Islands in the fall of 2002,

shortly after Pat Sharpe died. The New Testament translation was nearly

complete, but it took the team another three years to make sure every verse

was true to "deep," or traditional, Gullah ‹ and not the more modern, more

English-sounding slang that has evolved in recent generations.


 The 900-page volume, available online for $10, was published by the

American Bible Society, a donor-supported, nonprofit publisher based in New

York. It includes an English translation of each verse next to the Gullah

text.


 The Bible went on sale first at the Gullah Heritage Festival, an annual

three-day whirl of dance, prayer and food that attracts thousands to the

Penn Center. At a linguistics symposium, Canteen took the microphone to read

the opening verses of the Book of John.


 The words exploded from her mouth with such passion that locals and

tourists found themselves calling out "Amen." Afterward, they lined up a

dozen deep to buy De Nyew Testament. So far, about 3,000 have been sold.


 "That someone would translate the Bible into a language that's so

significant to my race   it's quite a feat," said Charity Jackson, an

82-year-old tourist from Washington.


 Al Smith, a retired lawyer from Hampton, Va., bought a copy hoping he would

be as moved as when he heard the Gullah Book of Luke on tape a few years

back. "I was in tears ‹ and I'm not a crybaby guy," he said.


 Smith, 74, said he could picture his ancestors struggling to make

themselves understood as they bent over fields or sweated over stoves or

gathered in the woods to praise a God they had just discovered.


 Their language was humble, but it was also powerful.


 "It moves me," Smith said, holding his Gullah Bible to his chest. "It

sounds so innocent. And so holy."


 *


 (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)


 From English to Gullah


anoint: pit oll pon (put oil upon)


blaspheme: shrow slam pon (throw slander upon)


fast: ain nyam nottin (don't eat anything)


fellowship: one wid (one with)


grace: blessin (blessing)


kingdom: dey weh God da rule (there where God rules)


reconcile: mek all ting right twix (make everything right between)


sanctify: mek um God own (make them God's own)


temple: God House (God's house)


 *


 Source: Linguist David Frank; De Nyew Testament



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