The first language group we're going to check out is in a language family with a couple of other projects PBTPNG is working with.
They live in a hilly region of the Madang province, with approximately 4000+ speakers.
In 1991, the first translators allocated in this language group. They were able to translate and publish the book of Mark before they had to leave the field.
The team of national translators didn't let that deter them and drafted the entire NT! Unfortunately, they divided the Scripture by chapters evenly with 7 different translators. The difference in styles, verbage, and voice is stark. Additionally, rather than taking each draft and polishing it to publication, thus learning what a "sweet" translation looks like, and starting again, thus learning and improving their skills as translators, the entirety of the NT is drafted with the talent of a green translator.
There's a lot of draft but should the work go into polishing it or should it be scrapped? How could scrapping it be done in a way that doesn't cause tension? This is a complication we would be walking into should we decide to work with this language group.
This language has shown dedication to completing their project, which is great!
They have had a missionary before which means there are some preconceived notions on how we ought to act. This can be good in that they know what to expect from "white skins" and the oddities of our culture, but it could be ... complicated if we don't fill the shoes of our predecessors to the expectation of the village.
This allocation is totally 100% a helicopter allocation. Which means dropping $2,000 (at least) every time we want to go in or out of the village. But we wouldn't have to buy and maintain a vehicle.
We're planning on heading out to visit this location on February 8-11th. However, the helicopter we were planning on taking isn't air-worthy. We can switch to using an SIL helicopter but that's who was going to charge us $5000 for the round-trip. Hopefully the other people who were planning on using the other helicopter will also switch to SIL and lower the price.
Stay tuned for information about the second language group presently on the table.
We don't want to have a hard choice to make. Please pray that the Lord guide us and the people He wants us to work with is exceedingly obvious.
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