By Paul McLean 麥煜道牧師 (December 30, 2021)

1980s Home in Hakka Village

1983. Two weeks to mail a letter from our home beside a rice field in Taiwan to family back in Canada. Two more weeks waiting for a reply. A whole month goes by.

2021. From my home in Toronto, I watch and listen over the internet as a coworker in the mountains of Taiwan simultaneously edits an indigenous Bible translation. In less than two minutes, I receive spelling updates in thousands of verses throughout an entire Bible. A vastly different way of communicating and working 38 years later in COVID times!

Home in Toronto online checking with teams in Taiwan

During a typical week in 2021, early mornings and late evenings Monday to Friday, I sit in front of my computer skyping with a coworker in Taiwan. (They are 12-13 hours ahead of me.) One screen has my Paratext Bible project open. On a second screen I see my coworker’s, 12,000 kilometers away. Together in real-time we converse in Mandarin and check the indigenous Bible translation for any needed improvements. Punctuation and spelling. Greater consistency in translating people and place names, religious and theological terminology, plants, animals, objects, and much more.

Checking the parallel in Exodus 20:2  and Deuteronomy 5:6

Careful comparisons and slight adjustments in our translation of parallel passages, such as the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 & Deuteronomy 5), Jesus’ sayings in the four Gospels, and New Testament (NT) quotations of Old Testament (OT) verses. Afternoons, after a nap and a walk, time to research, follow-up and prep for the next skype session. Day by day, week by week, all 12 projects I support made steady progress, in spite of the global pandemic.

At the end of 2021, we have almost finished typesetting the whole Tayal Bible. It will be printed early next year for the over 100 Tayal churches in the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT), plus other denominations too. Back in the 1950s, Presbyterian Church in Canada (PCC) missionaries Clare & Grace McGill began to learn the difficult Tayal language, devised ways to put the spoken language into writing, then with a team of new Tayal Christians started translating portions of scripture. It can take many years to translate the whole Bible.

1983 with Clare & Grace McGill

Lead translator for the Tayal Bible, Rev Watan Yawi

After several months work in 2021, reading groups from the three Bunun presbyteries submitted numerous spelling suggestions to make words and biblical names look and sound more familiar. Some names sound a little like Japanese (inherited in the 1940s), others like Mandarin (now the language of education), most others like Hebrew or Greek. It will take us a few more months to finalize the Bunun translation, then send it to the Bible Society in Taiwan (BST) for typesetting. Lead Bunun translator Rev. Manias 張玉發牧師 turned 82 this year!

Bunun Team with Rev Manias, 2021-12-03 at Jyen-shan PC, Southern Bunun Presbytery

For the Pinuyumayan New Testament, hundreds of biblical terms have all been checked for consistency. We still need to check and make any needed adjustments in all the parallel passages in the NT. We hope to finalize the NT translation by the summer of 2022 then start typesetting.

Pinuyumayan Bible Translators Rev Chang & Deacon Aykiu

In the southern mountains, the Paiwan team is reviewing newly translated passages in the OT, while a group of retired ministers are reading and testing books in the NT. Three small dialects of Ngudradrekai – Maolin, Tona and Wanshan – have almost completed each of their translations of Mark’s Gospel. We hope to publish a combined edition of Mark in 2022. Rev. Seehe 梁景龍牧師 has also prepared a draft of Matthew’s Gospel in the Wanshan dialect and is happily pressing on with Luke’s Gospel.

Paiwan Team in Covid Attire

The small Cou (Tsou) team live on picturesque Alishan (Mount Ali). Their NT was published in 2014 without any capital letters. Until recently the draft OT had no capital letters either. But writing practices have changed in the Cou community. In May 2021, with help from a BST computer expert, we converted the first letter in every person and place name and in the first word of every sentence from small letters into capital letters, a massive transformation. Gifted young evangelist Yapasuyongu 武錦鑫傳道 is an invaluable addition to the Cou team. This year he and senior team members reviewed and improved the draft translations of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Sadly, in October beloved coworker Rev. Wang Cheng-yi 汪正義牧師 died. He is greatly missed.

Feb 2020, Cou Team with Rev Wang (right)

In May 2021, I became the BST’s Translation Advisor (TA) for the Sediq-Toda project. Toda, along with Tgdaya and Truku, are three related members of the Sediq language family which is spoken in the high mountains of central Taiwan and the famous Truku Gorge area on the east coast. The Toda project is unique in that we can use the published Truku (2005) and Tgdaya (2020) Bibles and adapt them into the Toda dialect – much easier than translating from scratch. I have a great time skyping weekly with enthusiastic lead translator, Rev. Watan Diro.

Sediq-Toda Bible translator, Rev Watan Diro (Aug 2018, BST Translators Training in Taipei)

The Tao (Yami) New Testament revision project is based on Lanyu (Orchid Island) off the SE coast of Taiwan. Since becoming their TA in August 2020, I have not yet been able to meet with the team in person. In our skype sessions, Rev. Syan 周施恩牧師 and I are checking semantic domains in the NT to ensure that biblical terms are rendered consistently. His mother has started a draft translation of the Psalms. After the NT has been revised, the team wants to translate the whole OT, a project that will take many years.

Tao Bible translator Rev Syan (3rd right) with members of the PCT’s Mother Language Bible Translation Committee (Feb 2020, Pingtung)

The Revised ‘Amis New Testament, Psalms & Proverbs was published in late 2019. I attended the dedication service in March 2020 during my last in-person visit to Taiwan. In September 2021, the experienced ‘Amis team and I resumed our revision of the 1997 ‘Amis Bible. One group is checking and improving ‘Amis spelling and grammar, while a second group is checking biblical terms and parallel passages for translation consistency and accuracy.

‘Amis Bible Revision Team, 2021-11-09 in Taitung

Finally, the Hakka team and I have continued making small revisions to the 2012 Hakka Bible. The new edition planned for 2025 will be mostly Hakka-Han characters with the pronunciation of less familiar Hakka words added in brackets. We are also adding footnotes to explain the meaning of select Hakka words in Mandarin, which will help younger readers. This year we drafted five OT books and five NT books. The revision process is complicated and demands much care, but it is a joy for me to take a break from Mandarin and use Hakka, my “mother language” in Taiwan.

Hakka Bible Revision Team, Sept 2019 in Chung-lak

Throughout this second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, God has graciously enabled me to work from far away yet “alongside” to support these eleven indigenous teams and the Hakka team at various stages in each Bible translation project. I hope I can resume in-person visits to the teams in Taiwan in the spring of 2022. I thank God daily for my dear friends and coworkers, and the wonderful teamwork we enjoy in our shared goal to translate the Word of God into all the languages of the people of Taiwan. Thanks to all of you who continue to pray and support our mission of Bible translation through Presbyterians Sharing.