Our final teaching session with the Khmer staff was held all day Thursday and Friday morning. The following 2-minute video clip gives an idea of how it was done with translation.
My teaching was on lessons for living with each other in the Christian church, based on the epistle of James.
The pastor doing the translation has an amazing but tough story. He was born to a Buddhist family in a distant province. His family was killed by the Pol Pot regime, the "killing fields", so he was raised as an orphan. He first heard the gospel when an aunt who had taken refuge in the US and become a Christian returned for a visit. The first opportunity he had to have ANY schooling was when he was already 18 years old. He eventually attended Bible school and was ordained in 1998. He is now the senior pastor in the Anglican Church of Cambodia. We are finding that his life story is very similar to that of many people of his age group.
His English is rather limited. We had to use simple sentences and basic vocabulary so he could translate correctly into Khmer. Sometimes we both struggled to find an appropriate word. It appeared from the students' reactions that he handled the task rather well. Our biggest difficulty arose from his limited possibilities for translating back into English any questions or comments from the students.
In spite of these limitations, our contact with these Cambodians working to build the church in their country was very stimulating.
My teaching was on lessons for living with each other in the Christian church, based on the epistle of James.
The pastor doing the translation has an amazing but tough story. He was born to a Buddhist family in a distant province. His family was killed by the Pol Pot regime, the "killing fields", so he was raised as an orphan. He first heard the gospel when an aunt who had taken refuge in the US and become a Christian returned for a visit. The first opportunity he had to have ANY schooling was when he was already 18 years old. He eventually attended Bible school and was ordained in 1998. He is now the senior pastor in the Anglican Church of Cambodia. We are finding that his life story is very similar to that of many people of his age group.
His English is rather limited. We had to use simple sentences and basic vocabulary so he could translate correctly into Khmer. Sometimes we both struggled to find an appropriate word. It appeared from the students' reactions that he handled the task rather well. Our biggest difficulty arose from his limited possibilities for translating back into English any questions or comments from the students.
In spite of these limitations, our contact with these Cambodians working to build the church in their country was very stimulating.
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