Lost in Translation

Today was my second day of teaching. Now, my Russian is a little rusty, so all the teaching involves using a translator. In my case, it takes two translators to capture all my brilliance and wit. Here they are.
The woman on the right is Zhanna, and the other woman is her sister, Anya. They are both exceptional translators and work as linguists. Translation is very difficult work, and so Zhanna would translate the first two hours and Anya would take over for the last two.

I am very grateful for their flexibility. I get the impression that normally those whom they translate for have written speeches, which the translators preview. That’s not how I roll. I stuff my head with so much information that it is about to explode like a week old zit (wait, bad simile; How about, “like a fragrant flower exploding into bloom?). Then I pray over it till it feels right. Often I don’t use any notes at all. But these women roll with the punches.

By the way, this is the Calvinist with his translator, Elena. She is smiling because she does not have to translate for me. He is smiling because he was predestined to. And yes, the Calvinist has only one translator. I don’t want to imply he is less profound than yours truly, but…
Any communication with a translator is difficult. But this difficulty is doubled when you are teaching out of a translated English Bible, and she and the students are reading out of a translated Russian Bible. And the Psalms present more problems than most parts of scripture (because it is poetry).

The first day was mostly an introduction to the different types of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, but when I tried to illustrate this on the board, it soon became apparent that I and the students were quite literally "not on the same page." We worked it out by going back and forth explaining and correlating the English and the Russian, but it took some work, and was a little distracting.

When Tuesday morning came, I remembered that, just as the Spirit inspired the scriptures, so He would be the greatest help in helping us interpret them together. After all, if He translates our inneffable (look it up, Keith) sighs into intelligible prayer requests (Romans 8), He can certainly handle our little Hebrew-English-Russian problem. So I prayed. Intently. And the prayers were powerfully answered. Tuesday's lesson seemed to have a much greater connection with the students, and they responded with wonderful questions and comments. It was a different world.

Now, I realize that as a Pastor, one of those people who get paid to be holy, I should have been praying about this long before. But, there you are. I wasn't, yet God showed kindness by his help, not a reproach of, "about time, stupid". Hmmm...makes me wonder about what else I should be praying about lately, but haven't. How 'bout you?