“Dis a ou Jiizas Krais did baan. Im mada Mieri did jos ingiej fi marid Juozif, dem neehn kom liv tugeda yet laik ozban an waif, bot dem fain se shi di dav biebi inna beli, an a di Uoli Spirit did put di biebi de.” –Matyu 1:18

YOU might not readily be able to read the above excerpt from the Jameikan Nyuu Testiment, but Professor Hubert Devonish, the man who oversaw the linguistic translation of the New Testament into Jamaican patois, swears by its authenticity.

Just as literacy in English doesn’t automatically qualify one to read/write languages like French or Spanish, the professor argues, Jamaicans’ ability to read/write patois will only come with teaching and exposure, for “the sound values of [any] language are not universal. You have to know to pronounce in that language”.

“The notion that you are already literate and therefore must be able to read and write your language is a false notion as you will need to develop literacy in Jamaican,” he said.

Devonish was addressing this week’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange, where he, a linguist from his Jamaica Language Unit (JLU), Bertram Gayle, and general secretary of the Bible Society of The West Indies Rev Courtney Stewart batted for the translated text. He explained how the team decided which version of patois to use and how to spell the words.

“There was a lot of discussion about it,” he said.

“We wanted first off to make sure that it was not Anglicised… That would destroy the point that it (Jamaican) is a separate language. At the same time, of course, we had the problem of regional variation, meaning that depending on where in Jamaica you are you can say ‘Mi ah walk’, ‘Mi deh walk’, ‘Mi dah walk’, so we had to make some decisions.”

The team settled on what he describes as the normal route when selecting among a variety of a language — that which is used and accepted in the area around the capital city, in this case, Kingston.

“We went for the variety of Jamaicans who use ‘a’ rather than ‘da a’ or ‘the’,” he explained. “But at the same time, we wanted to make sure that other people (in other parts of Jamaica) saw themselves in the translation, so what you find is that many of the characters in the dialogue use forms like ‘ben’ and various [other] forms, to indicate that we tried to capture all of the varieties even while pursuing in the main, the narrative of the story using the variety chosen.

“Because of the prominence of Kingston and, say, for example, the dancehall and popular music that comes out of Kingston, wherever in Jamaica you are you are exposed to it, whereas there are some parts of Jamaica that are not exposed to other parts of Jamaica and that would create some sort of a problem, so the logical thing was to anchor the translation along with the variety of Jamaican which is pretty much widespread, while making sure that you try to keep this thing as [far] from English as we could,” the JLU head said.

The patois version of the New Testament is the product of four years’ work and is scheduled to be launched on Sunday, December 9 at Bethel Baptist Church in Half-Way-Tree. It is translated from Greek manuscripts and uses the Cassidy-JLU system of spelling and pronouncing.

Frederick Cassidy was a Jamaican linguist who in 1961 developed a method of representing Jamaican in writing using a single letter or a combination of letters to produce the same sound every time. He is the author of Jamaica Talk: 300 Years of the English Language in Jamaica.

Devonish said JLU tweaked Cassidy’s system somewhat, hence the Cassidy-JLU system. In addition to the linguists, Biblical experts trained in Greek, as well as ordinary speakers of Patois, through focus groups and other forms of consultation, provided feedback on the work.

“Lots of things we found out about the language [during the consultations] we didn’t even know, like, for example, there is a difference between ‘pickney’ and ‘pickeney’ for many people. For many people, pickeney is plural and pickney is singular,” he said, rousing laughter among the Observer editors and reporters at the Exchange.

“And it wasn’t one-off; it was right across the island that people were reporting this kind of thing.

The result, the professor said, was “a kind of in-between; not totally one or the other; a kind of compromise” in terms of the version of patois.

“We tried all the time to find a balance… to eliminate the second-guessing and the wondering,” he said further, referring in particular to how the words are spelled. “We wanted to maintain a strong element of genuineness while at the same time ensuring accessibility and acceptability.

Despite the rigours to which the text was subjected, Devonish acknowledged that corrections and improvements will likely be necessary in future.

“It’s not a science, so in the end we may somewhat have got it wrong, but that’s life,” he said. “There have been several translations of the Bible into English, and this is the first into Jamaican, so there will be some corrections.”

As was done during the production process, Devonish said there will be ongoing discussions once the translation goes on the market “to see what is right, what is wrong, what could be done better”.