The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 143

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

143

“And have you killed your ch’idzi?” he asked
politely.

‘My, wife!” exclaimed the boatman, horror-
stricken. “Why should I kill her?”

The missionary still failed to catch the subtle
distinction which that apostrophe brings into the
word for wife, so he went on calmly:

“Yes, don’t you remember? ‘You told me this
morning that you were going to kill your ch’tdz
so that we could eat her for dinner.”

Another missionary had trouble with the same
word. He was a bachelor, and he had much trouble
with housekeeping in the vernacular.

One morning he called the cook into his study

-and said carefully : —

“Now, I wish to give you a very particular
order this morning. I wish you to get me a ch’idzi,
and I wish you to exercise great care in the selec-
tion. Now, are you sure that you understand?”

The servant was sure, very sure, and with much
ceremonial bowing he backed out of the room.
Lunch time came, and no cook. Tea time, and
still no cook. At eleven o’clock the man came
back breathless.

“Master, I have searched over the whole city.
The cheapest one I can get for you will cost forty
dollars, and you did not give me that much money.
But I am sure you will like her if I get her for
you, for she is a pretty girl and member of a good
family.”

The Lutheran Missionary brings these stories :—

“May I Speak to My Mother-in-Law?”
A missionary engaged in the work of translation

in New Guinea sought long for the proper idiom to

express: “Far be it from me to do this thing.” One
day the idea dawned on the mind of an intelligent
catechumen whom he had consulted.

“Yes,” said the catechumen, “I undérstand now
what you mean. We can express the phrase per-
fectly. We put it in this form: ‘May I speak to my
mother-in-law before I will do this thing?”

In that land of strange taboos one of the un-
pardonable sins is for a man to open his lips to his
mother-in-law.

Perseverance Rewarded.
The translator must be always on the alert to

‘avoid wrong forms and mistranslations. He needs

also the spirit of perseverance in his search for the

-right terms, as this story of a missionary shows: —

“For two years and a half I was baffled in my
efforts to obtain one all-important word, but it was

the word that has belted the world with praise:
the sweetest word ever spoken by human tongue,
the word which is yet destined to make dark Africa
light in the Lord — the word ‘Savior.’

“Brother Krieger, laboring in another tribe,
had been badly torn by a lion some weeks before
this, and Kikuvi, being with him at the time, was
the means of his rescue. I felt that the word must
come now, and two years and a half of disappoint-
ment were put into the eager attention with which
I followed his story of the encounter. But he went
through the whole scene most eloquently and con-
cluded, even to his having frightened the lion away,
without using a word which I could conceive to be
the one sought after. Tinally, however, just as
I was about to give up again in despair, in a modest
sort of way he remarked, ‘Bwana nukuthaniwa na
Kilkuvi’ (‘The master was saved by Kikuvi). I could
have leaped for very exuberance of joy, but being
afraid of losing my precious possession, I immedi-
ately changed the verb from the passive to the
active form and said, ‘Ukuthania Bwana? (You
saved the master?) This proving correct, I said,
‘Why, Kikuvi, this is the word I’ve been trying to
get you to tell me these many days because I wanted
to tell you that Jesus, the Son of God, came—
‘Oh, yes? he interrupted, and the black face lit up
as in the lurid light of the camp fire he turned to
me: ‘I ‘see it now, I understand! Jesus. came to
kuthania [save] us from our sins, and to deliver
us from the hand of Muimu [Satan], ”

Never did sweeter words fall from mortal lips.
The treasure had been discovered at last. And
weary prospector, lighting suddenly on a rich gold
reef, never felt keener emotions than did the lonely
missionary when for the first time he was able
to frame that matchless word “Savior” in a new
tongue. i

Another Good Story.

Another good story is told by the Rev. E. W.
Smith, a missionary in Africa. He had worked
hard at the Ila language and amassed a consider-
able vocabulary; but there were still many words
he needed, and the search for them was tedious.
One of the words was the equivalent for “trust.”

. Hundreds of questions were asked with a view to

obtain the word, but nobody seemed to understand
exactly what he wanted. Then it came, as it were,
by accident. :

“Qne day I was working in my house,” he says,
“and had to climb up a rickety old ladder. As
I stood there in an awkward position, reaching up