Theory to Practice in Vulnerable Mission

An Academic Appraisal

Harries

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879068
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Missionaries from the West like to hit the ground running to solve as many of other people's problems as possible in the increasingly short term they have available for service. Hang on, says Jim Harries! After twenty-four years in Africa, observing how poverty, traditional practices, dependency, and misunderstandings continue, Harries asks, what is the point of bringing solutions that local people cannot reproduce? Harries challenges missionaries and development workers to counter dependency on the West by engaging in sustainable ministry that local people can imitate. This requires some Westerners to work on the basis of local languages and resources, a practice known as vulnerable mission. Rooted in personal experience, founded in a postmodern appreciation of language, drawing on anthropology, based in Christian theology, Harries provides a case for the necessity of vulnerable mission in the twenty-first century.

1

Models that Illustrate Difficulties of Inter-Cultural Translation

It is ironic as I set out to write this book, that I am writing to people who will most likely disagree with me. In short; according to you (my typical target readership) I am probably wrong.1 So that is why it seems important to explain why you are mistaken to think that I am wrong.

People’s notions of what is truth are not inflexible; but they are bounded. An understanding-oriented people, such as Westerners in this day and age, have accumulated an enormous body of knowledge that fits within these boundaries. Libraries are stacked with books consisting of it and reflecting on it. Websites increasingly fill with the same knowledge. To the Westerners, who read and write the books that fill the shelves and texts that saturate the internet, more and more of the truth is expressed, articulated, and expounded in an exciting journey assumed, perhaps, to be leading to “full knowledge.” Pressing on the boundaries of what is known is considered to be innovation. But, I suggest, it is only pressing on the boundaries. Whatever might be found outside the boundaries is considered by many western scholars to be wrong.

Language is a classic visible example of the careful bounded-ness that represents today’s native-English speaking West. If I cease to write like this, and instead pput itt liek fis, I have crossed into the field of “incorrect”! Can language be compared to human knowledge systems in total? Can knowledge be so clearly divided between what is “right” and what is “wrong” that the West has a monopoly on much of the former? Or has the West defined itself according to certain pre-suppositions (especially theological ones that are these days assumed and not subject to critical examination) that are in reality far from absolute?

That what is foreign is usually appropriated into familiar western boundaries, to make it acceptable, is not always realized. Translation has an important role in doing this; it “inevitably perform[s] a work of domestification” comments Venuti.2 Because, it would seem inappropriate (racist, ethno-centric etc.) always to accuse foreigners of being wrong, translators and those who explain what is foreign to the West do their best to domesticate what they find. That is; what is foreign is made digestible to the West by bringing it within the boundaries of what is “acceptable.” So aliyenisaidia kupalilia mahindi alikuwa Jumba (Kiswahili) becomes “Jumba helped me to weed the maize” and not “he was who me self-help to weed maize he was be Jumba.” The first of the above translations is said to be grammatically correct. As translation manipulates a foreign text so as to be grammatically correct for digestion by western readers and hearers, does the same not apply to its non-grammatical (e.g., its semantic and pragmatic) content? Yes, it does. Although this is inherently difficult to explain to a western audience, complex, intricate and involved features of African life in the literature about Africa are grossly simplified—if they do not disappear altogether.

Now—what would happen if this process was not engaged? That is—what would happen if what is foreign was to be presented to the West in all its naked foreignness? For a start of course—it cannot be; what is foreign will not make sense in its full foreignness, as a foreign language is meaningless, and the foreign context is unknown (or else it would not be called foreign). There has to be a process of translation to bring the “foreign” into the realm of comprehension of the target hearers or readers of a communication. There has to be a process of assuming (trust) that what is foreign has parallels in what is familiar. Translation is a subjective business, I suggest—contrary to the claims of some that it could be a mechanical task.3 Translators constantly make decisions about choices of words; the more so when either the languages or the cultures of speakers are different. If translators were to cease being careful to ensure that the foreign texts they work on are domesticated—the products of their translations would be at risk of being condemned as being “wrong” through being unpalatable.

In this chapter I want to examine inter-cultural translation in three ways, each of which make the same basic point—that the use of a common international language for the operation (i.e., in governance and as language of instruction in formal education) of cultures around the world for which that language is not a mother-tongue—is unhelpful.

The first way is to look at two sports—for example football (soccer) and tennis. Ad hoc inclusion of tennis discourse into a football context would clearly and indisputably be condemned as “wrong.” If we say that a football player gets “two chances to serve,” for a footballer that is nonsense, as he does not know what a serve is. The term serve needs to be translated. What is the football equivalent to a serve? Is it a kick off, or a penalty, or a free kick, or when the goalkeeper has the ball… ? None of these really fit, but in a case of translation one of them would have to be chosen. To say there are two chances would be considered wrong; there are not two chances given for a penalty kick. There is only one. If there is no goal scored on the first kick; then that is it! Therefore “there are two chances to serve” could be translated to a footballer as “kick the ball.” Other translation options will have other distorting impacts.

Instead of translating an alternative term, such as “kick the ball,” a translator may give a more abstract term such as “a footballer gets two chances to do something that is a critical part of the game.” Or a translator may omit reference to “two chances” altogether and simply say “sometimes a penalty kick may be awarded.” This translator, by bringing such a bland alternative, easily implicitly communicates that he does not understand the game being played, and seems to have little to say.

It is very difficult to teach a footballer to appreciate tennis if every explanation to him about tennis either has to be bland or wrong. In fact—not only is this “very difficult”; it is impossible. As long as what the footballer has in mind is his favorite team running around the football pitch kicking a round ball bigger than someone’s head into a rectangular shaped target area bounded by pieces of wood (or metal), he (or she) will not appreciate the sense in the rules of tennis. The way to help the footballer appreciate tennis is to remove him/her from the football pitch, put a racket in his hand and give him an opponent to play a tennis match in a tennis context! Following this illustration, the (only) way for someone to appreciate what is “foreign” is to go to that foreign place and participate in what is going on.

Could the same apply to teaching Westerners who have produced expansive libraries that include countless texts describing the rest of the world? Perhaps the only way for Westerners to understand foreign worldviews is to transplant the Westerners into foreign places, put that people’s language into their heads (and this takes longer than it does to take hold of a tennis racket), and have them play “the games” of the people under consideration. (Remember of course that even if someone should do this, they still remain with a similar level of difficulty when it comes to “telling those back home” what is going on because those back home have not experienced it.)

We could ask; what do words do in a language? It is commonly assumed that words have meanings. I would like to suggest that words do not, cannot, and never have been able to “have meanings” or to “carry meaning.” Meanings are not in words, but in people.

Of course people learn to associate words with meanings. So I associate the word eat with the practice of putting things into my mouth. That association however is not implicit in the word eat. Rather, it is an association that I have learned to make. That is, a process of learning or habituation that I have gone through brings an association between the sound (and written form) of the word eat with a process of putting things into my mouth. That is to say that the sound (or sight) of the word eat impacts my mind in such a way as to suggest putting things into my mouth. The same word could have a totally different impact (or very little impact) on someone who only knows a language other than English. Words have impacts on people’s minds. They do not carry meanings. As Sperber and Wilson explain: “as for our thoughts, they remain where they always were, inside our brains.”4

Inter-human communication can helpfully be compared to the process of typing on a keyboard, such as that of a typewriter or a computer. Words can be compared to a typist’s fingers. The fingers have a force, but any meaning that emerges as a result of someone’s fingers tapping the keyboard, cannot be said to be in the fingers. Skilful use of fingers can result in the emergence of particular texts on a piece of paper or screen on account of which particular keys the fingers strike. In the same way as fingers create words but in no way can be said to be words or to “carry words,” so words “create” meanings but are not meanings (and do not “carry meanings”). Words can result in meanings by impacting on someone’s mind in a way that has the mind link them with certain things, because the m...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Models that Illustrate Difficulties of Inter-Cultural Translation
• Chapter 2: More on Language in Relation to Africa
• Chapter 3: Development Projects and Outside Funding
• Chapter 4: What Is Africa?
• Chapter 5: Theology of Africa
• Chapter 6: Conclusion and “Vulnerable Mission in Practice”
• Bibliography