Keith is off to Germany again to work on recording the last bits of the New Testament in the Sinti Romani language. Ah, but there is no single standard for the Sinti Romani. Imagine there were no standard English of any sort. You had a text which had been translated into English in rural Texas. However, most of the people who were willing to help you record it came from Australia. A few others were Boston aristocrats, with one or two stray Canadians thrown in. If all these people were in a room together, they could carry on a perfectly lovely conversation. But they are not. They are in separate locations, trying to read English written down as it is spoken in rural Texas.
This leads to a lot of interruptions in the recording process.
"You could say it that way," the reader will say, "but really it should be . . .." Or, "I've never even heard that word before." Or, "I'm not saying that! That's incredibly rude (in my dialect)--what's it doing in a Bible text!?!"
The Spirit must be very active in every translation and recording project or they will never bear any fruit. Without love, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control, they could not even be completed.
(Oh, yeah, sometimes the heat goes out, too.)
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