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(Note: we hope to keep this page fairly up-to-date with news of our work. Unfortunately, internet connections are on occasion hard to come by in Africa. So, please check frequently.)
Toussian Translators
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It’s been awhile since we’ve had an update and we thought it a good time to really introduce our
translation team to you.
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Sungalo has been with the project the longest, 8 years. He works on first draft translation and has
worked on all of the existing Toussian publications. He is married with 2 children and is active in the
Assembly of God church here in Toussiana. The Assembly of God church is the only Protestant
church in the area.
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Joseph has recently joined our translation team. He was living at the bottom of the cliff before he
joined the team and has had to move to Toussiana. He is married with one child as well. Esther our
Swiss colleague, looks at the passage in Greek and checks for difficult passages then she discusses
the passage with Sungalo and Joseph. Then Sungalo and Joseph each do a first draft translation using
their French Bibles.
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Madeleine has been our typist. She is from the northern dialect so is not able to do first draft
translation but has proved excellent in first revision. After Sungalo and Joseph have each done a first
draft they are joined by Madeline and Pastor Pierre and the Wiessmans and they go over the text
together and put it together to make one text. Then it is ready to be typed and tested with a wider
audience.
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Pastor Pierre is the assistant pastor at the Assembly of God church. He has a heart for God and a love
of the Toussian language. Since Pierre has bible school training he is really good at the revision
process and has an ear for the naturalness of the translation. His wife Awa works with Trudi as
literacy coordinator and language learning assistant.
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We have had Robert McLaughlin visiting us from California with Wycliffe’s Discovery Program. Robert
was teaching our translators use of the computer during the month of June. He has worked with each
of Sungalo and Madeline in Word and Excel and file management, while Joseph has started to learn to
type. Together they have worked on the next two years Toussian calendars. They should be able to
do it on their own now. ?
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When Robert wasn’t working in the office he was able to visit a literacy class, watch the translation
and revision process and was invited out for tea. He even made the trek down the cliff to visit
Joseph’s family. It rained that day so coming back up was interesting. He also decided to teach the
neighbor kids to play baseball. It started out with about 10 kids they ended up with about 25! You
can just see a girl on the right carrying a basin of water oh her head. This is a typical chore for young
girls.
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Meanwhile Trudi was able to make progress on language learning and is able to put some simple
sentences together. She decided to have some girl time with Esther Yampa the main pastor’s wife.
Esther is a Moore speaker and doesn’t speak French so it was an interesting time, but they managed
to communicate. Esther didn’t think she could braid Trudi’s hair but natted it. The outcome was less
than Trudi wanted but the Africans absolutely loved it and Wilhelm said it looked nice. The hair is
pulled very tight so it hurts at first but it can stay in quite awhile. Trudi took it out after 2 weeks.
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We have been getting some rain so thank you for praying but continue to do so. Ouagadougou
(Wagadoogoo) has had very little and it is really bad.
This has taken a bit longer to put together than I thought. We are now in Ouagadougou for the
Discover Your Language (DTL) course.
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This is about half the class. They are studying basic linguistics.
Our group has been studying hard and since this is the very first time for studying this subject they
are finding it fairly difficult. They are enjoying the time and we have attended church together and
ate together afterward.
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Often in the afternoon there are exercises to do and some of these exercises are using Toussian. We
are all learning about the structure of the Toussian language! Some of the phonetic exercises were
very interesting and Wilhelm used Frisian and I used English.
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