The Translation Beat

About 3,000 Sursurunga people live on New Ireland, a long and narrow island northeast of New Guinea. Sursurunga society is matrilineal; family lines are traced through mothers.

Families live in small, sandy clearings beside the sea, or inland a little ways.

Some Sursurunga children are born with blond hair. Others have their dark hair bleached with lemon juice or peroxide. This little girl is a natural blonde.

The people grow a variety of root crops in their gardens: sweet potatoes, yams, taro, and cassava. Other food crops include citrus fruits, papayas, pineapples, and many variety of bananas. Gardens are fenced to protect them from free-ranging pigs.

Cocoa is an important cash crop. Inside these pods are seeds that will be used to make chocolate.

The Christian church has a long history on New Ireland, but sorcery and witchcraft are practiced openly by many Sursurungas, even if they also attend a church. Traditional spirit dances have resurged in recent years.

This clear, cold river runs through a village called Tekedan, and it is often filled with laughing, shouting swimmers.

Don and Sharon Hutchisson have lived among the Sursurungas for many years, learning their language and working with some of them to translate the New Testament and portions of the Old.

Though the whole New Testament has been drafted in Sursurunga, several steps remain before it can be printed and distributed. These women are participating in a checking session for part of 2 Corinthians. Checks like this one help ensure that the translation communicates clearly and sounds natural.

One by one, Sursurunga speakers are beginning to understand the importance of reading God’s Word in their own language. Miriam is a member of the translation committee and assists with some of the Scripture-checking sessions. Here, she tells a congregation how important the Sursurunga Scriptures are to her. Will you pray for the Sursurunga people?

The Taupota people live on a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea.

They build small dugout canoes to fish along the reef. Food is abundant in the gardens and under the waves.

The Taupota people are Austronesians, descendants of seafarers who spread across the oceans and live today from Madagascar to Hawaii and Easter Island. They are relative newcomers to the island of New Guinea, having arrived sometime in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christ. Many New Guinea cultures are far more ancient.

Like other Papua New Guineans, the Taupota people seem to delight in surrounding their home with flowers and shrubs.

Walls are made from long, tough Pandanus leaves. Some people can afford metal roofs; others use grass or palm-frond thatch, which keeps out the rain but helps the house stay cool.

The London Missionary Society arrived in Milne Bay more than 100 years ago. But after all those years, the Taupota people still do not have the Bible in their own language. All too often, church services are empty rituals, performed in the way a white man instructed long ago, and in a language most people do not understand.

Some of the Taupota people have decided it’s time for a change. Three times a year, they send Rex, Albert, and Henderson (shown here with a mentor, Brad) to translate small portions of the Scriptures into their Taupota language.

At VITAL, translation teams from several of Milne Bay’s language communities gather to learn from each other and Wycliffe personnel, and to work on their translations.

The Taupota community is supportive of translation work, and the translators have worked on chapters from Genesis and Mark. But many years of hard work lie ahead. Frustrations, discouragements, and distractions could derail the translation work. Will you pray for the Taupota people?

Life is hard at 8,000 feet. A mid-winter frost can kill off sweet potatoes, robbing communities of a whole year’s food. Women — even very old women — carry heavy loads on the steep mountain paths, doing what is in other parts of the world the work of pack animals.

Homes are scattered widely across the valley floors. Until recently, the place where this house sits was a no man’s land between fighting family groups. Many people died before peace returned. In the distance, Mt. Giluwe begins its climb. At 14,327 feet, it’s PNG’s second-highest peak.

A woman plants sweet potato runners in characteristic mounds. If the sweet potato crop fails, people are left with almost nothing to eat. It’s too cold for any cash crop but Irish potatoes — but the arrival of a blight has virtually eliminated even that opportunity.

Pigs too depend on the sweet potatoes for their food. Pigs are a measure of wealth and prestige; they are kept in wooden pens not far from the owner’s house. Pigs form an important part of bride price: the price a man’s family must pay to the woman’s family to seal a marriage.

People have slowly abandoned traditional dress and rituals since their first contact with Europeans half a century ago. But special events — here the payment of compensation for a family member’s involvement in an accident — still occasionally inspire them to bring out bird-of-paradise plumes, decorate their faces and bodies, and join hands to march and sing.

It is among these Kaugel people that Rob and June Head have worked since 1969.

Rob and June have worked with the Kaugel people to publish four New Testaments: three in the subdialects of Umbu-Ungu, and one in a subdialect of Bo-Ung. But after nearly 40 years, they have seen very little response to the Word of God. In a land of many churches but few believers, the Heads still wait and pray for revival.

Death comes early in the highlands. A crowd gathered to mourn for this sixth-grade girl, who died of a sudden illness.

Even as you read this page, the Kaugel people are carrying on their lives — sleeping perhaps, or tending their houses and gardens. Will you pray for them?