I'm just back from the meeting where it was a video presentation given by the circuit overseer. Has anyone else seen it? Apparently it's not on general release, only being viewed during CO visits at the moment. Top secret.
It was all about translation and preaching in different languages. Geoffrey Jackson appears a number of times, since he's the language expert on the GB I suppose. I notice he used the annoying expression "the wife" instead of "my wife" which I really dislike. Plus he seems to use the word antidote when he meant to say anecdote, but I am not certain about that. Is he blind in one eye or something? Because one eye appears always shut.
The film featured Blackfoot Native Americans from southern Alberta saying how great it is to have literature in their own language. The "blood tribe" or something like that, the narrator almost tripped over the word "blood". There was a very pretty Native American girl talking to the camera for a bit. Native Americans are beautiful people.
Then there were American families who have moved to Ecuador to preach where the need is greater. The father said it was important to focus on their children to make sure they make the truth their own. Reading between the lines you would almost conclude that they had moved their children thousands of miles away and immersed them in a foreign culture and preaching full time just in order to forestall the possibility of them leaving the truth as they grow up. Seems a pretty extreme solution to the drop off rate among the Witness youth. And there was a particularly precocious young girl in this situation talking to camera who had just been baptised. She could not have been more than 12 years old. I wonder if she'll stay in the Witnesses after all the effort her parents have gone to to close off other options.
The NWT is in over a hundred languages now. They are translating so fast that you have to wonder about the quality. It is a far cry the French version that took, what, twenty years or something to complete. Now they are churning out new translations within a matter of months. I wonder if some embarrassing mistakes lead to confusion and possible revisions in many of these smaller languages. Or if an apostate introduced their own ideas in some small African language for example, how would the GB ever know about it?
I'd like to make a collection of the NWT in all the languages. That would be pretty cool. I wonder if the literature desk would allow me to order all those.
The video also claimed many languages they translate into have no dictionaries or language reference works, and seemed to imply that Maya, spoken by 900,000 was one such example. But I can't believe that somehow. I am sure there are many Maya dictionaries. It stated there can be dramatic increases from small language groups when the literature is produced in the local language, so that's obviously the main driver of the whole thing. They also seem to take some pride in asserting that the Watchtower is the only regular periodical produced in some 50 or so smaller languages. Well that must be easier now that the magazines are so short, hardly worth calling a periodical.
That's about all I can remember from the DVD.