News ¢ Kate Lim worships at Aldersgate Methodist Church and is a volunteer writer with Methodist Message. / Illustrations courtesy of Wycliffe Singapore
Re-telling Bible stories in
Teochew
A
nimated banter in Mandarin and Teochew, punctuated with laughter while someone searches for the most appropriate dialect word as a Bible story is re-told from memory—this is a common scene when two full-time workers at Wycliffe Singapore, Beatrice Wong and Grace Lim (not their real names*), collaborate with a team of volunteer translators from Paya Lebar Chinese Methodist Church (PLCMC) to re-tell Bible stories in Teochew.
A demand for Bible stories in Chinese dialects Are you able to tell Bible stories about Jesus’ ministry in a Chinese dialect, such as Teochew? Not many people will be able to answer in the affirmative. And yet, there are still dialect-speakers in Singapore who have yet to hear the gospel, due to illiteracy, language barriers, or a lack of resources in their dialect. Wycliffe Singapore, an organisation known for its Bible translation work and Bible literacy programmes, embarked on a Teochew translation project, starting with classic Bible stories. “We want to improve each person’s access to God’s word in his or her ‘heart language’,” Beatrice said, referring to the native tongues of the dialect-speaking communities. Wycliffe Singapore ran a series of training workshops with speakers from various dialect groups (Hokkien, Hainanese, Teochew) in late 2020 and early 2021 because it saw the need to develop oral Bible stories to reach out to the dialect speakers. A project involving the telling and recording of Bible stories in Teochew, a commonly-spoken Chinese dialect in Singapore, came about when a group of Teochew-speaking participants was interested and committed to do more oral Bible stories in Teochew after the workshops. Currently, a group comprising 4 Teochew-speaking translators form the core team for the project. These volunteer translators, led by Mr Tay LM, are senior citizens with ages ranging from the 60s to the 80s, and attend PLCMC’s Teochew service. The team is also supported by some overseas translation consultants and facilitators.
The story crafting process The translation of the Bible stories into Teochew is more than a literal exercise. It involves a painstaking process of choosing the story, story crafting, and several rounds of testing and revision. Bible stories about Jesus healing the sick, exorcism and wealth are chosen because of the “cultural bridges” that help to connect with the Teochew audience, according to Beatrice. Story crafting—the process which involves multiple group discussions around the key themes, words and concepts for each Bible story—forms the bulk of the work. The team members also have to grapple with different worldviews between themselves and the target audience, and select the most appropriate phrasing to use in the translation. Storyboarding is part of the story crafting process
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METHODIST MESSAGE June 2022
