Sign language

Recently, one of my colleagues whose wife trained as a teacher the deaf, explained to me why we are bothering to translate the Bible into sign languages when deaf people can read written languages too in most cases. His wife's answer when he asked that question was that sign language is not a flat linear language like written and spoken languages are - it's a performance taking place in front of the person, with their hands as the actors, and their head and body as the set and the props. I found that very interesting.

I found out a few years ago that British Sign Lanuage (BSL) is a separate language to English, and it puts words in different orders to the way we do. The person who told me this gave me an example where they said, in sign language, "I sold my baby carrots". In BSL the adjective (baby) follows the noun (carrot), so when she said this there was a gasp of horror when she said "I sold my baby..." and a smile of recognition when they realised what she meant, even though she said it wrongly.

Another of my colleagues is exploring ways to help over 40 signed language communities who don't have the Bible in their language. I haven't spoken to him recently about it, but when I did a while back it sounded like it was using some cool stuff. I'll find out more, but I thought I'd get this entry up now. There's an article in our magazine about it.

tags: sign language
Bible
Bible translation

Another Wycliffe blogger

David Ringer, a writer for Wycliffe in Papua New Guinea has a blog. As you'd expect from a professional writer, it reads well, and has pictures.

tag: wycliffe

Bob Creson, president of Wycliffe US has a blog.

tags: wycliffe

Parachurch organisations

There's some interesting discussion going on in a blog entry about Parachurch Organisations. The basic question is, "do we need them?".

tags: church

Andy Paxo is working on One Laptop Per Child Bible translation software. Interesting stuff.

tags: OLPC

Desktop fundraising

Good idea from Sarah Hughes: an application that tracks all donations that you make to various charities.

You can see my comment on the blog, in summary, I'm sceptical that it could be made to work, but happy to participate in the effort.

tags: fundraising

Vision 2025 website launch

The Vision 2025 website has launched. The beginning of the end of Bible translation by 2025 is the aim. I'm involved on the donations back end (under development).

tags: Wycliffe