Who Said What Now?

Matthew 14:8


Herodias, mother of the girl, spoke to her girl and her girl spoke to Herod, "You must put the head of John the Baptist on a plate and bring it to me."

It was 6:30 in the morning. We had worked until 10 pm the night before. Instead of going back to their villages, all the men slept right there in the pavilion anxious to start first thing in the morning. However, they had stayed up until 2 am telling their wives and discussing among themselves what we had discussed in the 105 vs we had accomplished that day. So our start was a bit late. But here we were, I with a coffee in hand, them chewing beetlenut which also is a stimulant.

As I had each time, I asked them to translate the verse from their language into Tok Pisin, the trade language. But there was something fishy about the translation that got my attention.
I'm not amazingly fluent in Tok Pisin so there's always a chance I misunderstood, but I asked them to repeat the verse.
There it was again!
Or "wasn't" as the case may be. There wasn't any reference to the girl.

"Who told Herod she wanted the head of John the Baptist?"
"Herodias wanted the head."
"But who told that to Herod?"
"Herodias."
"And what did Herodias' daughter do?"
"..."
Those who had a printing of the Tok Ples scripture referred to it.
"Herodias... told the girl... and then she told Herod."
"Who told Herod?"
And no one knew.

"Herod told the girl she could have whatever she wanted. But she wanted to make her mother happy, so asked what her mother wanted. Her mother told her she wanted John the Baptist's head, so the girl went back to Herod and told him she wanted John the Baptist's head."
"So Herodias whispered it to her daughter. Herod didn't hear her."
And that's where the miscommunication came in. Indeed, if Herodias had shouted across the hall and her daughter had said, yes, that's what I want, it would seem that Herodias did tell Herod.
So to fix the confusion, we split the sentence into two sentences. First Herodias speaks to her daughter. Then her daughter speaks to Herod.

Everyone agreed that this made the translation clear and it was still sweet to the ear.

Be sure to check out the gateway to all the other tales of our comprehension checking.

It's Time for a Paternity Test

Let's check out Matthew 14:9

6 On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much 7 that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. 8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” (NIV)

The king heard this and his heart was distressed. But he thought of the strong promise he had made and he didn't want to be shamed in the eye of all the people who were sitting and eating with him. So he told the soldiers to do as the young girl had said. (English translation of Tok Pisin Translation of Tok Ples Translation)

Now, in Papua New Guinea, it's a common thing to want to avoid shame. If you ask someone for directions and they don't know, they'll give you some anyway because they don't want to be shamed. So I figured I should ask about Herod avoiding shame to see if it was coming across as a good thing to do. 

The answer:

This must not be Herod's daughter. It must be the daughter of Philip. If it was Herod's own daughter, he could tell her "no" without shaming himself.

An interesting implication the text has led them to! I don't think it's a major problem, but we have to research and figure out who's the father of the girl. We always read things through the lens of our own culture, but if the words we choose for this translation are leading them to believe something that's wrong, then we need to figure out if there's other ways we can word it so they don't think that wrong thing. Of course, if research does not provide a solid answer for paternity, then it probably doesn't make a major difference at all. But that's for someone wiser and with more experience than me to decide. 

(They did decide that while avoiding shame is a perfectly acceptable thing, Herod killing John the Baptist was a bad thing. I didn't quite get to whether it was a bad thing because murder is bad or because John the Baptist is a good guy, but we did confirm that Herod's actions were not being praised in this passage.)

Saying No.

I think a major problem many people have is saying no. Me? I don't have this problem. I love saying no.  

I say no all the time.

Saying no lots liberates me to say yes when I need and want to.

The director of the branch has been really great at telling people no, too. With so much work to be done and so few people on the field, new arrivals means help with super awesome projects. And they are (mostly) all super awesome projects!
But he keeps the eager chomping on their bits.

"No, you cannot ask the Smiths to do x, y, AND z! They just got here! They're about to have baby #2! Give them a break." But I have informed him that I am very good at saying no. And so they come, people with projects, albeit super awesome projects, and I say: No.

I'm about to have a baby. We're about to get a guard puppy (by the way, if you have info on training a guard puppy, hook me up!) And we're about to allocate and start our own super awesome projects.

To sign up for anything really would be stupid.

And I am not stupid.

So I keep my obligations few and only commit to very very short term things.

For this reason, when Lindy the Awesome came to me and said that she could use some help managing her workload, I was able to say Yes. Not only is the project important and worthy but I can help someone I love manage their commitment to a project they signed up for before they signed up for a REALLY IMPORTANT PROJECT, which is very time consuming.

So while I'm in Australia, I'll be working on generating Translation Helps in Tok Pisin! We have a ton of resources in English, but if you don't know English, you're kind of out of luck. But together with a huge team of people, PBT is working to compile information helpful to Bible translation together in the trade language. This information will be specific to Papua New Guinea and challenges that their culture and language rules often encounter.

We have a ton of Group Directed Projects in our organization alone who are forging down the long and hard road to get the Word of God in their own language without the constant and focused help of a translation specialist. This will help them in that difficult endeavor.

Now neither Lindy nor I have enough experience to read a passage of Scripture, immediately see all the problem areas and write up help on how to translate it in Tok Pisin, like the other people working on the project. She has to sift through a million commentaries and translation helps in English. Very time consuming. Well, I just so happen to be very good at sifting! So I said Yes. To Lindy. 

Now, when I was asked by the Director of Language Affairs if I wanted to be a part of this project, I said: No.

I want to help Lindy with her part of this pie. That's it! I don't want my own piece of pie! No. I'm helping Lindy. Because that's what friends do. They help eat pie so that there are no upset tummies!

And I have the time to do so! All thanks to my "No" Policy!

Just say no! - This message was brought to you by DARE. (not really)