Endangered Lakota and other indigenous languages find homes on the world’s most translated Website

 Endangered Lakota and other indigenous languages find homes on the world’s most translated Website

(Submitted by Roxanne Two Bulls)

“Lakota is such a beautiful language,” said Roxanne Two Bulls who volunteered to translate materials into Lakota for jw.org, the official website of Jehovah’s Witnesses that offers content in more than 1,030 languages, including many Indigenous languages considered at risk of dying out.

“I proofread it. I proofread everything,” Two Bulls said of her role as a mechanical checker during the translation process. “First, you proofread for punctuation, then for missed spelling, then for grammatical errors – so any errors can be identified and corrected.” She has helped translate both printed materials and videos for the website.

Two Bulls lives on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation as part of the Red Shirt Table community there. As a child she often heard Lakota spoken by her parents, grandparents and community members; but her knowledge of the language was limited because her family only spoke English in the home. She was thrilled, therefore, when the college she attended offered classes in Lakota; and she put a lot of effort into learning the language well.

She began a study of the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1980s. She said of her earlier life: “I had a risky lifestyle. I was like a poster child for everything bad that could happen to a person. And I think that led me to really, really look for something better. I looked for something better because I wanted it to be better.”

Drawing close to the Creator and understanding Bible prophecies about a better world to come have given her a solid hope for the future – one that she wants to share. She views her translation work as one way she can help others.

Ernest Little White Man is another translation volunteer for jw.org. Today he lives in Rapid City, South Dakota, but he spent some of his childhood on the Pine Ridge Reservation, too. Unlike Two Bulls, he did not have to go to college to learn Lakota. “My mom and dad

Ernest Little White Man both spoke it, so I grew up with it at home,” he said. “I had to learn English when I went to school.”

Little White Man explained the great amount of effort involved in translating materials accurately into Lakota. First, the group of volunteers took a translation-skills class where they learned to express thoughts in phrases rather than always through literal word-for-word translation.

For example, there is no one word in Lakota for “kingdom,” yet God’s Kingdom is the theme of the entire Bible. Therefore, it was of utmost importance that the group select the very best combination of Lakota words to accurately reflect the concept. Wakȟántȟánka Wóitȟančhan Tȟáwa was chosen, which in English literally means “God Rulership His” – in other words God’s Rulership.

That wasn’t all. Once the group translated the materials, they went to the extra effort to field test them. “We went door to door to see if people were understanding what we were translating,” he said. If a word was not clear to others, it was back to the drawing board to select a more suitable expression.

He is very pleased that materials are now available in Lakota on jw.org. He related the experience of a friend from Hot Springs, South Dakota, who visited a man on the reservation and presented a Bible-based tract in Lakota. The man said, “We should have this in our computer because our language is getting lost.” Little White Man’s friend was able to quickly explain that it was already in a computer – in fact anyone could access it, free of charge, from jw.org.

“Translating Indigenous languages is a labor of love for all those involved and for our organization,” said Robert Hendriks, the U.S. spokesman of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “The work is challenging and time-consuming. But our goal isn’t to make a profit, it’s to provide the Bible’s comforting message clearly and accurately to as many people as possible.”

Little White Man and his wife, also Lakota, first began studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1970s, when he was stationed in Germany after being drafted into the

U.S. military. He said: “I think the changes that we made after that were nothing but positive. We quit smoking and pretty much quit drinking.” He added that the Bible principles he and his wife learned also helped them provide a happy home environment for their young daughter.

Today he loves sharing his hope for a better world to come with others, and he views the many hours he has spent doing volunteer translations as a way to help others get closer to God and preserve Lakota for future generations at the same time.

Sharing the Bible’s message of hope and comfort in the Lakota language has been a powerful experience for Little White Man and Two Bulls. “It was a team effort,” Two Bulls said. “And oh, we had fun. We really, really had lots of fun.”

And, whereas she views her secular work helping victims of domestic violence and sexual assault as important, she said of her volunteer Lakota translation efforts, “You know, those were the best things that I’ve ever done in my life.”

 

 

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