Storytime with Zach
Have you ever wanted to look like you have it all
together? I felt that way a little bit
as we tried something new this last weekend.
We wrote up some fictional stories a few years ago based on real
experiences. Each story gives an example
of problems some communities have had in using their Scriptures. Then we play the stories and give people time
to think about how they might apply in their own communities. My friend and colleague Rev. Linus had the
great idea a few years ago that these stories should be recorded in an audio
format in the local language of the people.
His idea was that people may feel the stories happened closer to home if
they hear them in their own language than if they hear them in English or even
in Hausa.
In the morning before we traveled, I
remembered I still didn’t have a printed copy of them. There hadn’t been any power in the office
because it was closed due to the elections.
So there I was on the morning of our journey with no printout. Since the person who usually takes our
children to school was sick, Christy was doing that, and I was home with Mari
and Lydia. This meant I couldn’t even go
early to print. So, as I hurriedly
packed my things, I also e-mailed the document to someone in the office asking
her to print it. As we passed by the
office to pick some people up, I literally ran in and grabbed the printout.
After dinner we were supposed to meet with Mr. Dako to
record some stories in his language. He
showed up with his wife, and at about 9:30pm we all met to discuss the stories. I
had those printouts and we all looked over them together. We were all already too tired for the careful
work, so Linus had the wise suggestion that we not attempt to record the
stories that night.
The next morning we met at 7am. We sat outside in a lovely, shady garden
environment. We were planning to
translate the stories orally, but Mr. Dako showed up with a hand-written
translation of six of the ten stories.
Wow! As we worked through the
translation, his wife commented on small mistakes of accuracy, and we got the
stories just right.
However, we had one small problem. I was planning to use my laptop to
record. I often use my laptop for making
calls, so I knew the microphone worked.
What I had forgotten about those calls is that I usually lean in close
to the screen and half shout into it, so that the other person could hear
me. Mr. Dako read in a perfectly natural
voice, just the kind I used to love when recording word lists. But even when I amplified it on my computer,
you could barely hear his voice at all.
I didn’t let on that I was a bit worried. I just had him practice the next two stories
while I tried something else. My phone
makes nice recordings too, why not use that?
Sure enough the phone was able to play back a story loud and clear. While he got ready for the next story, I
transferred the file from my phone to my computer. I opened the file expecting to see the
waveforms, but I just got an error message… a very unhelpful one at that. I had reached a dead-end.
I grabbed my colleague’s phone, and found it had a voice
recorder, too. I recorded a sample file,
and saw that it ended with “.ogg”. That
should work on my computer! But when I
tried to connect his phone to my computer the image on the phone screen danced
up and down and even turned upside down.
I had never seen anything like that before! I’ve learned not to be too surprised and still
tried to connect it. It wouldn’t go no
matter how I coaxed. By now Mr. Dako had practiced a few stories, but I still
didn’t know how we would record them.
I confessed to the group that I wasn’t sure how we would
record the stories, and asked if we could pray together specifically for the
technology. We prayed, and Dako continued getting ready. At this point, I picked up Princeton’s phone. This one didn’t have an audio recorder at
all! But that could be fixed
easily. Princeton connected his phone to
a wifi hotspot on my phone and downloaded a popular sound recorder from Google
Play (the android app store). The sound
recorder worked fine, and the recording played on my computer. Even better,
when I pulled out the mp3 radio we had brought for small groups to use to
listen and discuss the stories, the test file worked there, too!
After each story, we played it back and asked what he had
said. In only two cases did we need to
make corrections. It wasn’t as careful
and accurate as Bible translation, which would require a written back
translation, consultant checking, and community testing (among other
things). We just wanted stories about
challenges people face in using Scriptures that sounded as if they could have
happened right here in Gbari-speaking land.
 |
| All the paper below (to the left) of the rope were added after discussing the stories |
We did end up using the stories. The responses didn’t lead quite as much as we hoped to bringing out challenges in using Scriptures. However, as we worked on back translating the
stories I was impressed that they were right on target. Also, at the end of the day two people
happened to comment how striking it was that these stories sounded “just like
they had happened in Gbari land”. Please
pray with us as we continue to develop ways of working with communities to
identify their Scripture Engagement needs.
Pray that God gives us success… and humility!
(By the way, do you want to see the stories? I can e-mail them to you. Just e-mail me, or write a comment below)
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