Translator floated Cho Chin manuscripts to safety By Dr Joseph Hong, Translation Consultant, UBS Asia-Pacific Region
Impassable It was not even passable by four-wheel-drive jeep, the usual means of transport for travellers from Mindat to Pakokku. From Pakokku, Yangon-bound travellers still have to board a ferryboat to reach Pagan, then take a bus.
Foreigners are not allowed to enter Chin state, so Mr Thang has to travel several times a year to Yangon to meet the UBS consultant. Mindat is a small isolated hill town. Phone lines have yet to be installed and even electricity has only become available in recent years. Unable to send a quick message about the flood and yet eager not to miss his appointment, Mr Thang decided to walk the 62 miles (99 kms) from Mindat to Pauk, another town which is linked to Pakokku by a better road unaffected by the flood.
The walk took him three long exhausting days, staying overnight in villages on the way, wading across numerous submerged areas and mountain streams that had swollen into waist-high raging rivers.
Shoulder-high In some places the floodwater was shoulder-high and travellers had to literally swim across. The translation drafts and Bibles that Mr Thang carried with him had to be hauled over the flood on a tyre fitted with a net in the middle. In this way, the translation manuscripts were finally brought safely to Yangon to be checked by the consultant.
Originally a Buddhist, Mr Thang became a Christian at the age of 22. He was then among the few Cho Chin people to have obtained the high-school leaving qualification and so to be eligible to go on to university. However, his widowed mother was too poor to support him, so he started work as a primary school teacher in Mindat.
When some Baptist missionaries came to Mindat, his elder brother first heard the Gospel and was baptised, then his mother and then Mr Thang himself. Leader
Eager to prepare himself to serve the Lord, he decided to give up teaching and went to Yangon to study theology. After graduation, he returned to Chin state to take up pastoral work and has become a leader in the local Baptist church.
After attending a translation workshop held by the Bible Society of Myanmar in 1988, Mr Thang was chosen to be the translator for the Cho Chin project. The New Testament was completed in 1995 and work is still progressing on the Old Testament. In early 2001, there were joyful celebrations at the Myoma Baptist Church in Mindat, as the newly-published Cho Chin New Testament was dedicated and officially distributed to the Cho Chin Christians.
While still working as a teacher, Mr Thang started to take a keen interest in his native Cho Chin language, which is spoken by around 80,000 people in the southern part of Chin state. Some 60 per cent of Cho Chin speakers are Christian. He regretted that the language was no longer taught in schools, resulting in fewer young people being able to speak it properly. So he set about revising the few old textbooks he could find.
Later on Mr Thang helped re-introduce these textbooks at some local primary schools, organised workshops to train teachers how to teach Cho Chin, compiled hymnbooks and collected folk tales. New lease of life As a result of these efforts and with the recent publication of the New Testament, the Cho Chin language has found a new lease of life.
Mr Thang’s task of translating the Bible is not an easy one, as there are no dictionaries or grammar books about the Cho Chin language. While following the text of the Good News Bible as a model, he has to constantly reshuffle elements of the message to make it sound natural.
However, in spite of all the difficulties such work brings and the economic hardship Myanmar has experienced in recent years, Mr Thang strives to do the best he can. It is his firm conviction that every effort should be made to ensure that Christ’s message in all its richness will live in the hearts of his fellow Cho Chin people. (WR 370/5 - 9.02) [PHOTOS] |
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