By IPS Correspondents
KINGSTON, May 7 1998 (IPS)

An attempt by a local religious group to translate the Bible from English to Patois, the dialect of the Jamaican people, is causing quite a debate in this northern Caribbean island.

“Scriptures have their most far reaching impact on persons when heard in their heart language or mother language…

“We express our feelings very graphically not in English but in Patois and it is out of this reality that we have, with the help of the UBS (United Bible Society) who provided us with the necessary consultancy we needed, embarked on the Scripture Translation Programme,” says Courtney Stewart, General Secretary of the Bible Society of the West Indies, (BSWI) the group which has undertaken this project.

The BSWI is an affiliate of the UBS which is a world fellowship of Bible societies.

“The idea of translating the Bible into Patois is by no means an attempt to induce people to stop speaking in English,” explains Stewart. “But clearly in a society where people live, communicate and conceptualise ideas in Patois, it is quite appropriate to provide them with the Scriptures in Patois.”

Stewart says that although the Scriptures may already exist in the official language of a country, if there is another language which the people speak informally, then UBS is mandated by the 1980 World Council Meeting to make the Scriptures available to the people in that other language.

The selected passages for translation were carefully chosen to convey God’s sovereignty in nature, in people’s lives and even death. They were selected against the background of the social climate prevailing in Jamaica.

Crime and violence are prevalent and the dons (usually self- appointed gang leaders of political strongholds), who assert themselves as invincible human beings, flaunt the popular saying, “a me run tings” the BSWI says.

The BSWI hopes that the gospel of Jesus Christ when heard at the level at which those who are mesmerised by the grandeur of the self- styled dons, would impact on those persons, jolting them into the realisation that it is in fact God who still runs all things.

Observers say whether this goal will be achieved is another matter.

St. John Chapter nine is one of the Scriptures which the BSWI has translated and recorded on an audio cassette.

The story of a man who was born blind and who received healing from Jesus is told. The man who had received his sight was ridiculed by a religious sect called the Pharisees as he insisted that he was healed by Jesus Christ.

Jesus heard that the man had become an outcast and when he found him, a conversation ensued between the two.

The Jamaican Patois translation is vocalised on the cassette. The first two lines of the written dialect would run: “Jesus ear seh dem trow im out and when im fine im, im seh, ‘Yu believe ina di son of man?’ The English version runs: “Jesus heard that they had cast him out and when he had found him he said unto him dost thou believe on the Son of God?”

Real life images and much animation are brought to the story in a way that only the dialect can convey. A pulsating rhythmical reggae beat belches out in the background, adding a new dimension to the gospel according to St. John — though it also rivals the actual spoken words for listenership.

But as captivating as the unique reggae gospel sounds may be, many Jamaicans argue that it lacks the “sacred flavour” found in the English version of the Scriptures.

“I think it is more for entertainment than for serious contemplation,” says one Kingston church leader.

Others disagree. “The BSWI has merely formalised what most, if not all preachers have already been doing…,” says another religious leader.

The Jamaica Council of Churches, the umbrella organisation for many churches in this Caribbean territory, has embraced the project hailing it as ” a move in the right direction.”

Other sections of the society, however have taken the debate in another direction and have began questioning whether or not Patois is an accepted language and are arguing that God’s Word should not be trivialised by translating it into an abstract dialect.

To the linguists, however, Patois is definitely a language as it satisfies all the criteria that any other recognised and accepted language does. It has its own grammatical structure and vocabulary.

“‘For linguists, every form of speech which people use to communicate with each other is a form of language… It (Patois) does not yet possess a standard writing system which is known and accepted by a wide cross section of its speakers but then, neither did English or French 600 years ago,” says Dr. Hubert Devonish of the Department of Linguistics at the University of the West Indies.

“Learning the art of Patois is no different from learning Spanish if your native language is English…. The real issue concerns the ideology in thinking that it may not be worth the effort to learn to read it,” he adds.

He also notes that it is the social construction of a society which determines what is, or is not a language. ” What might not have been considered a language yesterday could easily, with due influence in the society, become a language today.”

Stewart notes that while there is no immediate plan to have the translation of the Scriptures done in a written form the BSWI will continue to systematically translate the Bible on to audio cassette.

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