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Engage - Elizabeth's Story (Cambodia 2009)

Language and culture are inseparable

Elizabeth Haggie is from Edinburgh and is studying French and Linguistics at York University.  She also visited Cambodia in July 2009 with an Engage team.  Here she writes about seeing Bible translation and language development first-hand...

Being a linguistics student, I was especially keen to find out about Bible translation and community development in Cambodia. There is a lot more involved than I had realised, and many political issues to overcome, such as the fact that the Khmer script has to be used when creating a writing system for any minority language.

There are about 18-20 minority languages in Cambodia, and many of them have not got a writing system necessary for education. In order to understand concepts properly, it is vital that people are able to learn in their native language before using Khmer, the national language.

We went to the Cambodian Bible Society and heard about another objective for the creation of a writing system and literacy programmes for these languages, which is to enable the people to have access to the Bible in their heart language and not just a recently learned one.

The team visit the offices of the Cambodian Bible Society

Language and culture are inseparable, and there was a lot of emphasis on making sure that any translation took this in to account, identifying the cultural connotations of any word or phrase. It was great to hear from someone currently involved in the process of Bible translation, and to realise the actual implications of dedicating your whole life to this work. Cambodia is a wonderful country, and I would love to go again!

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