Bill & Norma Jean Jancewicz

Tentmakers

Translation Brief 11Nov2013 “FAQ”-2

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Bill Jancewicz

Our dear partners,
This is the second follow-up to answer Frequently (F) Asked (A) Questions (Q). The response to “FAQ”-1 was so positive that we are thinking that this is the highlight of your week!

The question we get a LOT (especially once folks understand the answer to the first question) is:

(2) “So… what does Bill do […all day long…] ?”

The short answer is that he serves as Norma Jean’s “support staff” **.

But Bill also keeps pretty busy outside of those responsibilities as well. Trinity Western University (TWU), where Norma Jean is enrolled, is also the home of CanIL, a training partner of Wycliffe Bible Translators and the center for SIL training in Canada. Besides the opportunity to connect with and serve along side the staff at CanIL, Bill is also upgrading his skills by taking a class to use current computer software for applied linguistics–language documentation, dictionary-making, grammar writing and preparing literacy materials. So at least two days a week Bill goes to the campus with Norma Jean to attend his classes there.

Bill is also involved in a Consultant Development program as part of Language Program Services for the Americas Area. He is completing assignments related to “Field Linguistics Specialist Certification”. In short, he is continuing to upgrade his linguistics skills to better serve the Bible translation needs of the minority language groups we serve, including Naskapi, Mushuau Innu, Cree and other related languages.
There are also the Old Testament Bible Translation projects that the Naskapi team is working on, which he facilitates from a distance by internet communication with the Naskapi language specialists in the Naskapi community in Quebec. Several projects are just beginning and some are about to come to completion: We’ll be sharing about these Naskapi publications in particular in the weeks to come.
Finally, and related to all of these, Bill is working on needed revisions to the Naskapi dictionary, moving the database to the current language documentation software, working on Naskapi literacy books, and training (via Skype) the Naskapi language specialists to use the translation tools.

As usual, if you have any further questions, feel free to send them to us. Maybe yours will be chosen for another “Frequently Asked Question” answered soon!
Thank you for sharing our vision for everyone to have access to God’s Word in the language of their hearts.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean Jancewicz

** “administrative assistant, driver, bodyguard, personal chef, APA guidelines resource, critic, editor, encourager”

Translation Brief 04Nov2013 “FAQ”-1

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Bill Jancewicz

Our dear partners,

A few weeks back we sent out a newsletter [link] to everyone, and from the responses we got from many, it seemed to raise more questions than answers!

So I thought that it would be good to send out some answers to those questions most frequently asked. “FAQ” has become a regular feature on many websites, in an attempt to anticipate those questions (Q) that are most frequently (F) asked (A). Unlike such websites, we had not anticipated the many questions that were raised, but we will take this opportunity to answer those which occurred most frequently since that newsletter.

(1) “Why did you move to British Columbia?”

Most questions like this one were expressions of surprise that we had moved at all! We apologize that we had not made this clearer in earlier messages. Last January [link] we mentioned Norma Jean’s plans to pursue graduate studies of her own to in mother-tongue and multi-lingual education, building on her experience and work with Naskapi and Innu. At that time, she had not yet been accepted into the program at Trinity Western University here in BC, so we were still waiting ourselves for that direction.

At the same time, our son Nicodemus was considering his own transfer to Trinity Western University after having completed two years at Three Rivers Community College in Connecticut. When both Norma Jean and Nicodemus were accepted, our plans started to become more clear.

In order to better serve the Bible translation and language development needs of Naskapi, Innu and other First Nations people groups across Canada, we have been encouraged by our Wycliffe field administration to continue our professional development which includes completing our graduate degrees. Bill accomplished this during five summers at SIL-UND, and earned his MA in linguistics. Norma Jean started her MA program in August here in British Columbia. The program Norma Jean is taking has components that help broaden her insight into language education for First Nations people, which she has already been involved in for several mother-tongue communities [link], [link]

It has also been a great opportunity to be here where we can connect with Nicodemus and encourage him in his own undergrad program.

Another answer to a “Frequently Asked Question” coming soon!

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean Jancewicz

Northern Translation Summer 2013 Newsletter

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Bill Jancewicz

Our dear partners,
Thank you for your prayers for us during the past few hectic months of work on Naskapi language projects and our service to others as part of our Wycliffe assignment. During the first four months of 2013, we were working mainly in northeast Canada at our home in Schefferville near the Naskapi community of Kawawachikamach (Kawawa). Norma Jean has served the past few years in the Naskapi school in the Naskapi language curriculum department, in support of teachers who teach in the Naskapi language in elementary school. The curriculum department is responsible for providing the Naskapi language materials that are used to help Naskapi children learn to read and write their own language.
Over in Labrador on the coast about 240 miles east of Kawawa is the Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish, close relatives of the Naskapi. We were invited to conduct training workshops there and at the other Labrador Innu community of Sheshatshiu for Innu-speaking classroom assistants, and to help them to begin setting up their own curriculum department at their schools there in March. Norma Jean conducted education and material production classes, while Bill provided computer training and also began to explore adapting the Naskapi scriptures to the Mushuau Innu language by audio.
Naskapi Language Specialists
The first few months of the year had Bill also very busy with a remarkable opportunity to recruit and train four new Naskapi language specialists to work full-time in the Naskapi community on translation and other language development work. The four that were selected and hired by the Naskapi Development Corporation were Amanda, Kissandra, Kabimbetas and Jimmy. These four were trained in using computers to do Naskapi translation work, and in daily reading and writing practice, with a view to working more and more independently on translation projects of their own. Also, in April Bill taught another section of the McGill University teacher-training class, a dozen Naskapi adults who are working towards their Bachelors of Education (B.Ed) in order to teach and/or prepare Naskapi materials at the Naskapi school. This four-year program started in 2010 includes undergraduate-level university courses provided for the most part right in the community. Bill has been teaching adult literacy principles (reading and writing in Naskapi) along with Naskapi grammar to enhance their reading success. The four Naskapi language specialists-in-training also joined the McGill students since what they needed to learn was pretty much the same thing that Bill was teaching there.
Professional Development and Academics
Since beginning to work with Wycliffe we have always been strongly encouraged to keep our education and linguistics skills current, but that was not always easy to do, with the full-time work on the language project and raising a family. But since the publication of the Naskapi New Testament in 2007, our Wycliffe administration has urged us to follow through by working towards advanced degrees in our fields of service. So, back in 2009, we enrolled in studies at the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) at the University of North Dakota (UND).

English: Merrifield Hall on the campus of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bill began his studies towards a Master of Arts (MA) in linguistics, and Norma Jean took the “Mega-Literacy” courses there that summer. This was also the summer that we moved back to the Naskapi community to focus on Naskapi literacy training and Old Testament translation. For the next five summers, we would return to the University of North Dakota SIL where Bill continued his graduate-level course-work in linguistics. We decided that it would be best for everyone if only one of us were enrolled in graduate school at a time, so Norma Jean served as director for childcare services at SIL for the past four summers, rather than course-work. Bill completed his MA course-work and successfully defended his thesis this summer in North Dakota, and graduated with his MA in linguistics from UND on August 2. The title of his thesis is “Grammar Enhanced Biliteracy: Naskapi Language Structures for Facilitating Reading in Naskapi”, which researches how teaching Naskapi grammar might assist those who are learning to read in Naskapi.
As already mentioned above, Norma Jean’s expertise and service to the language communities focuses on the area of education and curriculum, and, like Bill, wants her academic studies to contribute to her service in a significant way. She found course-work that focuses on multi-lingual education theory and practice in the MA-TESOL program that is offered by Trinity Western University, in Langley, British Columbia. She applied for and was accepted into this program, which is a 12-month, full-time course beginning in September of 2013. Besides the course-work, she will also be doing practical projects and internships, which may include periods of service in the Naskapi or Innu communities to apply the principles she will be learning.
While TESOL generally refers to “Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages”, Norma Jean’s focus will actually include methods of teaching literacy skills in the mother-tongue; such as teaching Naskapi speakers to read and write Naskapi better, or teaching Innu speakers to read and write Innu better, which will also result in their overall success in their language skills in other languages. The educational principles and strategies for these goals are similar, and can be applied to our ongoing language development work in these and other minority-languages.
…to be continued tomorrow (on page 2)

Northern Translation Brief 26Sep2011

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Benjamin Jancewicz

Our Dear Partners,
We would like to thank you for your prayers for us as we traveled to the Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish on the Labrador coast. We are very happy to report a good trip, a warm welcome, and many good and positive contacts with regard to helping the Mushuau Innu language community to take some steps towards building capacity to start a local translation project into their dialect. The Naskapi Mother-Tongue Translators who work with us at Kawawachikamach, Phil, Silas and George, were very encouraging to their Mushuau Innu speaking counterparts at Natuashish. Indeed, speakers from the two communities, Naskapi and Mushuau Innu, have very little difficulty in understanding each other’s speech.

Naskapi MTTs and the Mushuau Innu chief and deputy

We met with the Mushuau Innu leadership at their council office, including the chief, Simeon Tshakapesh, and the councillor in charge of education, Simon Pokue. We also spent time at the Natuashish school, and made some important contacts there for Innu language literacy and helping to establish consistency in spelling.

We discussed the possibility of Bible translation work with Sister Sheila, who serves the parish church at Natuashish, and also with Cajetan Rich, who serves in the church as one of the Innu language lay-readers. Cajetan helped us with a draft publication of a church book, providing us with recommended spelling changes and revisions.

We are grateful for hospitality and assistance from workers with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Newfoundland and Labrador, who serve the community by hosting a Sunday School and the school breakfast program. We were provided with an excellent opportunity to meet with the Hon. Peter Penashue, the first Innu Member of Parliament, who was visiting in the community at the time.

Meeting with Hon. Peter Penashue MP

Finally, representatives from the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) were in Natuashish meeting with local leadership, and they took the time to also meet with us to learn about how language-based development work has benefited the Naskapi community, and how it could also be applied in the Natuashish community.

To top it all off, back at Kawawa three days after getting back ourselves, we were unexpectedly visited by an entourage from the Natuashish community: The Mushuau Innu band council chartered two aircraft and flew direct from Natuashish to Schefferville with 28 visitors, including their chief and deputy, some elders and youth, and various other leaders in their community. They toured the Naskapi community, got re-acquainted with relatives, and met with the Naskapi translation department where we work on Bible translation. They were very interested in learning from the Naskapi team how they might establish a similar initiative in their own community.

Monique Rich and Norma Jean

Now that we are back here in Kawawa working on Naskapi Old Testament and literacy, and the Mushuau Innu have gone home to Natuashish, we are looking forward to seeing what God is going to do in both communities.

Thank you for continuing to pray for both of these communities, their response–and ours.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Northern Translation Brief 06Sep2011

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Benjamin Jancewicz

Our Dear partners,

We are preparing for our second trip to the Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish on the Labrador coast. As most of you remember, this community is closely related to the Naskapi in the interior; in fact their recent ancestors were the nomadic caribou-hunting families of the barren grounds of what is now Quebec and Labrador. Some of these families centered their trading around Kuujjuaq (Fort Chimo) near Ungava Bay and the rest were settled around Utshimassits (Davis Inlet) on the Labrador coast, since the early 1900s.

The Fort Chimo group moved to the Schefferville region in 1956, and they are now the Naskapi of Kawawachikamach.

The Davis Inlet group relocated to Natuashish, a new community built on the mainland in 2002.

The Mushuau Innu community is well known in Canada because of widely publicized social problems:

Because of their shared history, the Naskapi language spoken where we work in Kawawachikamach is very close to the speech variety spoken in Natuashish. But there are significant differences that developed over the past 100 years due to contact with outsiders:

The Naskapi live in Quebec, the Mushuau Innu live in Labrador
The Naskapi live inland, the Mushuau Innu live on the coast
The Naskapi write in Canadian Syllabics, the Mushuau Innu write in a Roman orthography
The Naskapi are Anglicans, the Mushuau Innu are Catholics
The Naskapi are in the Quebec school system, the Mushuau Innu are in the Newfoundland school system

In the spring of 2008 we tried to take a trip to Natuashish, but we were hindered by foggy weather on the coast.

Bill and two other Naskapi colleagues made it there in April of 2010 for a four-day visit.

Bill and Norma Jean will be leaving Friday, 9 September with his co-worker (and former Naskapi chief) Phil Einish, and mother tongue translators Silas Nabinicaboo and George Guanish.

For an interactive Google Map (zoom in and see the Natuashish village) try this link:

On Friday we are scheduled to fly south to Wabush, in western Labrador, and then east to Goose Bay in central Labrador. Sunday, 11 Sept we are scheduled to fly north to Natuashish on the coast, spending five days there before returning back the way we came starting Friday, 16 Sept.

The goals of this trip include presenting the possibilities of a community-based language development project that would include scripture translation into the Mushuau Innu language for Natuashish.

Thanks for your prayers for good contacts, travels, and outcomes.

Pray for us: “that our love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that we would be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.” Phil. 1:9

(The apostle Paul expresses it better that I can.)

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Northern Translation Brief 08 April 2010

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Benjamin Jancewicz

Our Dear Partners,

Thank you for praying for Bill’s trip to the Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish last week. He went with two Naskapi co-workers and they all returned on Friday, April 2.

The remote communities of Kawawachikamach and Natuashish are the two communities where most of the nomadic caribou-hunting groups from the northern half of the Quebec-Labrador peninsula were settled. Their languages and culture are still very similar. But they have been separated from each other now for about 100 years.

So one of the purposes of this trip was to determine whether materials produced for Naskapi could be used for the Mushuau Innu. Since there is a degree of mutual intelligibility, we had hope that this would be the case.

The data we collected, however, leads us to a different conclusion. The Mushuau Innu may be able to decipher some of the Naskapi translation, but that is a long ways from being able to use it. There are differences in not only the sound system of the languages (that being the first thing one notices) but also differences in the grammatical structure as well as a different inventory of lexical items (sometimes, they use different words altogether). So our Naskapi work will at best be of indirect help to them.

On the other hand, many Mushuau Innu individuals expressed a strong desire to have a language project started in their community, and several of them indicated that they would like to be involved. They said that they would like to have a Bible translation project started in their own dialect, so that they would not have to “decipher” (translate from) the existing Bible translations in related dialects.

The Naskapi team then offered to help the Mushuau Innu to form the partnerships that can help them to get started with a translation project in their own language. We can help them find the training and assistance they will need to carry this out. Their local government, their church, and their school leadership all expressed their support for their own translation project.

Now, Bill has to prepare a report for the survey trip for several audiences: The Mushuau Innu community and the Naskapi community would like to use this trip as a catalyst for more cultural exchanges. Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International, along with other potential stakeholders, need to have the linguistic survey data that Bill collected analyzed in order to better assess the specific ways that the two dialects differ. And the groundwork needs to be laid for the Mushuau Innu team to begin on their own translation project.

During interviews with Mushuau Innu speakers, discussing the possibility of a translation project in their own language, they said:

“Our dialect is different; why should we have to learn a different language in order to read it?” –Innu teacher at the school

“We would like to be allowed to use Mushuau Innu spelling to write our language.” –Innu office worker

“A Mushuau Innu translation of the Bible is long overdue.” –clergyman ministering to the Innu for the past 30 years

“Forming a committee to work on a Mushuau Innu translation is something that is needed,” and “What do we have to do to get started?” –former chief of the Natuashish community

“I don’t want my children to be speaking only English in the future.” –former band manager

“We would be happy to have help (from Wycliffe) to start our own Bible translation project.” –Mushuau Innu church lay reader

Thank you again for your prayers for this trip.

Keep on praying for Bill as he spends the next few weeks writing the reports, for the vision for a Bible translation of their own to grow in the Mushuau Innu community, for the Naskapi to know what they can do to help them get started, and for God’s continued work among these people in the north.

Blessings, Bill and Norma Jean

Northern Translation Brief 23Mar2010

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Benjamin Jancewicz

Dear partners,

I am preparing for my first trip to the Mushuau Innu community of Natuashish on the Labrador coast. As most of you remember, this community is closely related to the Naskapi in the interior; in fact they were once just one loosely-related collection of nomadic caribou-hunting families. Some of these families had been settled in around Kuujjuaq (Fort Chimo) near Ungava Bay and the rest were settled around Utshimassits (Davis Inlet) on the Labrador coast, since the early 1900s.

The Fort Chimo group moved to the Schefferville region in 1956, and they are now the Naskapi of Kawawachikamach.

The Davis Inlet group relocated to Natuashish, a new community built on the mainland in 2002.

In the spring of 2008 we tried to take a trip to Natuashish, but we were hindered by foggy weather on the coast.

Bill will be leaving Friday, 26 March with his co-worker (and former Naskapi chief) Phil Einish. They will take with them Tshiueten Vachon, the new Naskapi language worker trainee.

For an interactive Google Map (zoom in and see the Natuashish village) try this link: <Trip to Natuashish>

This Friday we are scheduled to fly south to Wabush, in western Labrador.
Saturday we fly east to Goose Bay in central Labrador, where we will meet with the Natuashish chief and council (who are also traveling this week).
Monday we are scheduled to fly north to Natuashish on the coast, spending four days there before returning back the way we came on Friday, April 2.

Thanks for your prayers for good contacts, travels, and outcomes, and for Norma Jean as she holds down the fort back in Schefferville.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean