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Student translates Bibles for Incans
By Emma Tocci
Collegian Reporter
"And this is me in a field of llamas,"
Adam Mayo said, flipping to the next picture in the stack.
Sure enough, there he stands amid a sprinkling
of rump-up llamas on a lush Andes mountainside.
Last semester, Mayo, a senior Spanish major
from Grand Blanc, Mich., spent seven weeks in Peru with Bibles
International after he had an internship for the organization
during the summer for the Grand Rapids-based ministry. Interested
in Bible translation as a vocation, Mayo took the position with
B. I. working on a linguistic model of the Spanish New Testament
to aid translators of native languages in Central and South
American countries.
Mayo welcomed the chance to join linguist
Henry Osborn in Peru for a glimpse of the translator's world
at a B.I. conference where the Quechua translations of Romans
and the beginning of Matthew would be hammered out.
Derived from Incan ancestry, Quechua is spoken
across South America by 1.5 million speakers, most of whom are
campasinos, or poor sustenance farmers settled in the more remote
and less populated areas of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina.
In his team Mayo worked on a version in the Cusco dialect, the
primary language of most indigenous Peruvians.
Mayo knew that traveling to Peru would mean
forfeiting his fall semester at Hillsdale, though he did arrange
to receive some Spanish credits. He knew it would require his
earnings, comfort and health, but boarding the Lima-bound flight
on Oct. 13, he still didn't know quite how much it would take.
Mayo's first and longest stint was in Lima
where he sat in on a committee comprised of Peruvian missionary
Tim Whatley, Osborn (for whom Mayo took notes), and five native
Quechuas, also fluent in Spanish and Koine (New Testament Greek)
from their seminary studies.
The team spent eight hours a day for two and
a half weeks on the translation.
"It's pretty complicated and tedious,"
Mayo said, "but when you get down to it, it's well worth
it because the men are all excited about what they are doing
and it means a lot to them-to actually know that they'll be
able to have a good Bible translation."
South American pastors object to the two earlier
Quechua translations because one is not faithful to Greek versions
and the other is illogical because the translators did not properly
understand Quechua grammar.
To avoid these problems the group works together
with a series of forward translations, back translations and
evaluations. Mayo explained that the main translator, Luis Huillca,
first reads his work of changing the Greek to Quechua. After
the group's critique, Huillca does a back translation, changing
the Quechua translation to Spanish that it may be compared to
the Spanish linguistic model. Then the Spanish is translated
back to the Greek, and a linguist compares all of the words
chosen along the way to ensure their equivalent meanings.
Mayo said the group has already been working
on the Quechua translation for ten to 12 years, and hope it
will be done by 2008.
"Twenty years is typical for each testament," Mayo
said.
After the conference in Lima, Mayo traveled
northeast to Urubamba, where Huillca and Whatley live in Arin,
a village 15 miles outside of the city.
In Arin, Mayo stayed, played, taught and toured
with the Whatley family's five children, ages 2 through 20.
Three of the children were adopted from a Peruvian tribe and
spoke a self-constructed pigeon language they completely forgot
after learning Spanish in an orphanage.
Mayo was pleased with his Spanish education
in Peru and the chance to "learn the difference between
the Spanish that's taught in the classroom and the Spanish that's
taught in the real world."
Even though Mayo quickly acquired the different
dialects and turns of phrase, many other parts of the culture
were not as easy to adopt.
"People urinate on the side of the road.
Animals wander in the road all the time, especially in the country,"
Mayo said. "One day I was in church and I turned around
and this lady was breast-feeding her baby in full view of everybody,
so that was real different. It took a little bit to get used
to."
Parasites were another cultural difference
he would have to adjust to… the hard way.
The lesson began on the two-day drive from
Lima to Urubama in a station wagon. An extremely full station
wagon.
"There's no concept of maximum occupancy.
One time we fit ten people in the station wagon," Mayo
said.
On the way the group stopped at a restaurant
near a river. The good news was that the trout tasted great.
The bad news stuck around for the rest of his stay in South
America, leaving Mayo with nothing but his crackers and an upset
stomach for solace.
"It was really good trout," Mayo
said, "but I'm not sure it was worth that."
For the last portion of his visit Mayo stayed
in Cusco, a larger city that showed its Quechua roots though
its marketplaces, artisans, architecture, Incan palaces and
temples.
He also visited the famous Andes peaks Machu
Picchu (old mountain) and Huayna Picchu (young mountain), where
he learned even more about this people with whom he worked.
Mayo and his upset stomach climbed to the top of Machu Picchu
with naught but his small package of Ritz crackers.
Admiring the palaces, stonework and mountainside
crop terraces from 1000 A.D., Mayo said the Quechua ancestors
were "very advanced for their time architecturally, and
agriculturally, and with astronomy."
Mayo also was befriended by a number of Peruvians,
especially the young men he tutored in English. One of his closest
friends, Agustine Fernàndez, was Mayo's age but was already
married with three children.
Mayo joked about the differences between him
and the Quechuas, calling himself "Gringo," but he
appreciates the similarities as well.
"Yeah, they're short," the 5-foot-4-inch
college student said. "It was sort of nice because I felt
like I fit in."
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