This past week I was at a workshop at the annual meeting of a group of translators working on the Bible in other dialects of Fulfulde. The meeting was in the capital of our neighbor to the east. I experienced no problems there, even though events the week before my trip there made the situation slightly tense.
Each year this group gets together for a time of training, planning and networking, with the goal of producing better translations in Fulfulde. Right now there are translation projects for Fulfulde dialects in Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria and 2 in Niger. This time there were representatives from 6 of the 8 projects. Most of expat workers (called Linguist/Exegetes) were from English speaking countries, so it was a great time of getting to know people that I will be working with over the next several years.
There were especially 2 people that stood out for me. The first was an American girl who has been in Africa for 13 years. When I heard her name I said “she must be a Mennonite” So we got to talking and I told her I was from Virginia, and she looked pretty surprised and asked where in VA, and I told her and she said “That’s where I was born!”
Another person I got to know is working with the Fulfulde dialect that is most closely related to ours. He is a great guy, we both got pretty excited at the prospect of using computer technology so that we can work together and “adapt” our translations to and from our dialects. If we can get things to work out we will likely make a big impact on the amount of time needed for translating the whole OT.
All in all it was an inspiring week. Now I just have to learn Fulfulde! Well I guess that can wait for next week.
