Burning the Outhouse

In the early days of the establishment of our work at Porto Velho, Brazil,
there was a serious fire danger. That may sound strange, considering we were
in the Amazon rain forest where annual rainfall is measured in feet. All that rain
makes grass grows tall in the rainy season, and it becomes tinder dry when the
rainy season is past. Very dry grass up to six feet tall, as flammable as gasoline,
surrounded the buildings and posed a real fire hazard. To counter this hazard we
customarily burned the grass in a controlled manner in August or September,
before the really dry weather set in.
During one such burn I had a radio contact with our operations center at
Cuiaba, 700 miles south of us. While talking with their radio operator I heard a
loud “Whoosh” just outside my radio building. Looking out I saw that the
outhouse had burst into flames. Apparently fire had smoldered from the edge of
the burn area and had ignited the dry wood of the outhouse. I grabbed the
microphone and told my contact that I’d have to leave because the outhouse was
burning.
In Brazil we used Portuguese for our radio contacts. In my haste I
translated “John” (the English slang for outhouse) literally into Portuguese so it
came out “casa de João”,(John’s house). The operator on the other end asked
“Whose house?”, which reminded me that a recent arrival, named John, had just
built a house. I rephrased my statement, using the Portuguese term for “privy”.
Unfortunately, that sounded sort of like the term for “pick-up” and my contact
asked “Whose pickup?” During all this confusion the outhouse was burning. By
the time I had straightened out the misunderstanding, that facility was gone
forever.
That miscommunication was mostly amusing no one lost anything of value
and we had planned to eliminate the outhouses, anyway. Sometimes, though,
there is a more tangible cost.
One morning during the radio contact the linguist at the Juma village had a
list of purchases for the next supply flight. Among those items was “Uma duzia
de bisnagas” (a dozen French breads). However, he pronounced it “bisnagres”,
which sounded like “vinagres”, and I read it back to him that way. Imagine his
surprise when he received twelve bottles of vinegar rather than the bread he
thought he had ordered!
The confusion that results when communication isn’t clear can be
amusing, annoying, or disastrous. I Cor. 14:6-11 speaks of the importance of
being understood by our hearers. There are pitfalls to avoid when using
“tongues”, whether these are supernatural tongues or not. We hold that it is so
important that people clearly understand the Gospel that we must go to the effort
of producing an accurate translation in the mother tongue of our audience. A
learned language often doesn’t communicate clearly.
The Portuguese version of the chorus “Heaven Came Down” is “A Paz do
ceu encheu meu coracao” (The peace of heaven filled my heart). Believers in
the Paumari tribe wanted to Brazilianize by using the Portuguese choruses, but
they sang this one “Rapaz do ceu encheu meu coracao” (the young man from
heaven filled my heart). There is no real doctrinal error in this misunderstanding,
which actually can be understood as “Jesus came into my heart”… It is an
amusing illustration of the inadequacy of a learned language, but none the less

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an illustration of the very real danger in using anything but the mother tongue to
communicate important concepts. This is why I have dedicated my life to helping
with the task of Bible translation.
See Judges 12:6 and John 1:14.

Copyright © 2009 Richard A. Need

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