Maya Bethel



Watch Tower (literally "lookout tower")

We live in Mayan country here on the Yucatan. That is partly why it has been said that the culture here is a bit different than the rest of Mexico. Mayans primarily live only on the Yucatan, so this is the ideal location for translation offices. The Mexico Branch set up translation offices here in Merida a few years ago. We have visited these offices twice now since we arrived in January. The first time we were given a tour and were guests for the noon meal. We sat at the table with Manuel and Wendy, who are in our congregation, learning English and doing quite well, and a couple from the Mexican Sign Language congregation that shares our Kingdom Hall and speaks almost no English. What fun we had trying to discuss the meal. We had Panuchos and Salbutes, two traditional Yucatecan foods, much like local tacos, but with different ingredients. This was a very nice privilege for us. Our friend Coral was visiting both times we visited, and another friend Wendy the second time.

We ate it all! Nothing left.

This extension of the Mexico Branch operates like any other Bethel, just smaller. There are 25 Bethelites here on site living and working to translate literature into Maya for this large population. They experience great challenges in this work. We struggled to completely understand how it is done, but it seems that much correspondence comes from Puerto Rico or Mexico City in Spanish to be translated into Maya, and other correspondence from New York in English. This may be time sensitive material that cannot be translated first into Spanish, that is why several of these brothers here in Merida are learning English to do just such work. What a fine effort they display! During our second visit, a team of local brothers from Maya congregations all over the Yucatan were on site to review some recently translated work. They were to see if the translators had done well in there interpretations of thoughts and phrases.

Example of the many challenges

See, Maya has fewer words than either English or Spanish so many challenges arise. Like the word "marriage" in English is translated into Spanish as "casarse", but there is no word like this in Maya, rather the idea must be conveyed using several or many words, "Ts'o'okol beel", in Spanish these words translate to "el fin de su camino".. translated back to English they mean "the end of his road". I know, that one seems bias...here is one more, "finger" in Spanish is "dedo", into Maya it becomes "Yaal k'ab", or literally "hijo de la mano", back into English it becomes "son of the hand", So there you have it, translation in a nutshell. Confusing huh? There is much work to be done.

We also learned that because the text grows in length when translated into Maya...many more words than in English, some ideas or thoughts must be condensed or cut out completely in order for the material to fit into the prearranged space. Like in our Examining the Scriptures Daily...if every word and idea were translated completely to full length, the booklet would become a thick book. They use MEPS here in this office so the composer must make the material fit into the same space as if it were in English.

Our tour group

 We have heard endless experiences of Maya speaking individuals who learned the truth in Spanish many years ago but it didn't reach their hearts and so they failed to make progress. Once the same life saving information was finally available in their mother tongue however, they made rapid progress. All this has happened in just the last 10 yrs! Similar offices are accomplishing this same work for over 47 other indigenous languages in Mexico alone.