My Gripes About Emerging Church Brasil

Only one gripe, actually. We have really enjoyed working with Olgavaro Bastos who has come out to be a part of our roundtables and training events in Tokyo, Austin, England, and Prague. We love that movement . . but there is one thing that bugs me . . .

. . .unless we speak Portuguese, we cannot understand a word they are saying on their web site.

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In some ways, I like that – it preserves their culture and language and enables them to be unique. But having all their resources and stories in English (and Spanish) will enable them to speak into a larger world where there are also many emerging church movements, although often smaller and not as vibrant or colorful. And the rest of the world REALLY needs the Brazilian gift.

The first words of the English translation arrived this morning for me to check over:

“Who are we?

A movement encouraging the establishing of new communities (expressions of the Body of Christ) in the emerging generation, also called the Tribal Generation . . .”

“We are not:

An organization

A denomination

An authority structure”

45881119292057-1“Our history



One side of the story got started back in 1997 when observers realized that similar things were happening among youth in Asia as in some parts of Europe. Further research showed that the reality of the Global culture was impacting the way many people were doing church in many nations.”

I am looking forward to getting the rest of the script today and tomorrow, but the fact is, i have an event to host this week and leave for Aberdeen tomorrow night. Any volunteers to check over the script and make corrections/suggestions? Send me an email now. This is a 2 day project.

Andrew

Andrew Jones launched his first internet space in 1997 and has been teaching on related issues for the past 20 years. He travels all the time but lives between Wellington, San Francisco and a hobbit home in Prague.

3 Comments

  • graham says:

    Why can’t we just feed their pages thru Bablefish or something similar?
    That’s what I effectively ask of any non-English readers who come to my site.
    Or maybe we need to find someone bi-lingual who can set up an alternate version, with the Portuguese still being the default?

  • graham says:

    Oh, I see that they’re heading in that direction already.

  • baruch says:

    Nothing can really take the place of a live human translator. An electronic translator will work only if the original message is worded in very simply and logically. Idiums may be translated litteraly, and/or wording that coinsides with an idium may be translated accordingly. The meaning in Portugese would have the best chances of survival if electronically translatied to a similar language, like Spanish, may sound a bit funny in English, but probably be lost if electronically translated into Chinese, Thai or Japanese.
    Example: the Coke slogan, “Coke brings life”, was understood in China as, “Coke brings your dead ancesters back to life”!
    I would go with a human translator.

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