From the Solomon Islands, where the local people are so tied to their land that they would sacrifice themselves to prevent commercial logging, to India, where there exists a belief in hundreds of thousands of Gods, to here in the United States, where Mexicans are coming over in an attempt to find better lives, the GRN is using the word of God to help these people. All these countries with third world communities seem to need help in some way. The GRN is not allowed to aid in anything more than offering cassette forms of The Bible as well as hand crank machines to assist in playing them.
Is the goal of this group really just to get a recording of every language in the world? But as a group of devout Christians, using The Bible as a way of recording the types of language in an area is a bit much. Is there a deeper goal to the Group, like spreading the word of God to all places of the world in the hopes to destroy the religions and beliefs they see to be inferior to the word of God? Maybe even to have the entire world follow the beliefs of Christianity. Is The Bible really a necessity in the attempt to record the world's languages?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe questions that you addressed at the end of your post are all good points. The amount of culture lost because of the missionaries it hard to imagine. I have no problem with religion but I do have a problem with religion being forced on to people. I have been stopped on the street by people who try to get me to come to their church many times. It's like they have a agenda. The one thing that sets me apart from the people in the videos is, I can say "NO" very easily. The people the video have no choice. The missionaries can almost do anything they want and convince these people into anything. Most of them have little or no education and very poor. There was a little boy in the video who said his mom likes it when the missionaries come because the give them stuff. I personal thought that most of the people needed food and water before they needed a bible. I wonder if one day people will practice religion and not try to convert others? Probably not.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the film, my thoughts were focused more on the impoverished state many of the GRN targeted communities were in rather than on the language aspects of each situation. I find it difficult to understand how the GRN, focused on showcasing God’s compassion, can refuse to provide food or water to people who desperately need it. Instead the advocates insist on giving the communities cassette tapes, which will supposedly provide them with the sustenance they need, should they convert to Christianity.
ReplyDeleteBeyond those initial thoughts, I realized that although GRN has documented so many languages around the globe, they may be hurting these languages rather than helping them in the long run. By encouraging the conversion to a foreign religion, a religion originally practiced by a group of people might become lost. Consequently, the type of language used in their native religious practices would be lost as well.
Furthermore, just as we saw in the film, certain members of a community may not be welcome back if they convert to Christianity. As a result of their exclusion, they may not have the opportunity to speak their native language. Overtime, as they use their native language less and less, they may lose the ability to speak it altogether. It is because of potential scenarios like those previously mentioned that cause me to question whether or not the work of GRN is beneficial or destructive.
You bring up a good point with your questions about whether or not GRN has a deeper motive of trying to impose its religion on the peoples of Soloman Island and India. Although it is highly likely that this may be the case, complete destruction of the old religion is hard to accomplish because of the differences in translations of the Bible. As we have seen in that "telephone game," true meaning gets lost in translation. We also see an example of this with the man they used to translate the language "Mixican"(at least I think that's what they called it). He couldn't completely translate word-for-word like the missionary had wanted him to because there was no such word in the "Mixican" language. This just shows how language can change people's perception on things. Another example comes from the people who converted to evangelical Christianity because they saw their neighbors who had already converted were able to save more money since they weren't giving it away to saints. Their reasons for converting may be more so for economic benefits than for spiritual benefits.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point about the ongoing work in translating the Bible into every language is that the Bible becomes the Rosetta Stone for this place and time. While not every language will survive into the future, a few of the languages will and there will be multiple translations to compare against in order to provide a look into dead languages. Of course, the methods used to create and provide these Bibles are probably a little less than forceful, but we come to a recursive problem, as is it better to continue to ignore these small groups with these languages or send missionaries to convert and potentially bring interest from the outside world in supporting them?
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the video, I recognized that many recorded language translations of the bible done by the GRN can be inaccurate. It was stated in the video that sometimes people would add words to certain verses that are not intended to be there or translate them completely different. Another example shown was when the GRN missionaries were translating a message of the bible through the game of “telephone.” Each person translated the message into another language and at the end, the translation was different. As mentioned above by Farrah, this displays that language can be lost through translation. I feel that this also may lead to a false representation of the bible and its verses.
ReplyDeleteFrom the movie, I also find out that the words of bible translated to other language may not be very accurate. As always mentioned by Akiemi before, culture is always embedded in the language. If outsiders can not understand the culture, how can they have accurate translation. Yes, Christianity is a good stuff. But how the missionary act to the third world might not be in a reasonable way. As I remember I think in India, a missionary led a old poor man to start a prayer. The old poor man was sick and they can not afford to see the doctor. The missionary asked me to give up the old religion and rely on God. What they did is pray. I can not deny the power of praying. But can they do more to help the poor. Yes, missionary definitely need to express God's words. What is more important as God's disciples is to act how God act.
ReplyDelete