Finding "God" in Zhuang Part 2

Continued from Friday, August 26, 2008:

One day, we got together in our kitchen with two linguists, and hashed out some of the most difficult terms with our two young Zhuang translators. We had asked one of the translators to bring his father along, a man who has been a believer for a short time, and has spent most of his life in a small rural village. He stoically sat at the table, trying to look interested in the conversation, but contributing little. After we had discussed the God term for awhile, he spoke up.

"Have you considered using the word Boh-fax?" he said.

We looked at each other, and then at the two young translators who looked as clueless as we did. We knew what the two syllables meant, literally, "sky-father," but did not know the rural Zhuang had such a term in their culture.

"Everyone knows about Boh-fax," he continued, "Boh-fax made everything, he controls the weather, and is responsible for what happens in our lives."

Each of us proceeded to pop out questions like, "Is he good?" "Is he eternal?" "Is he all-powerful?" and so on until we were convinced that we had indeed found a local Zhuang term for God that met the necessary requirements.

Later, we replaced the old word with the new one in our script, and have already seen its effectiveness as our teammates have shown the video in remote villages.

These villagers said, "We have heard this story in Mandarin before, but now we understand it!"

Praise Boh-fax that he had already revealed himself and his name to these local Zhuang!