Lost in Translation

I attended a Korean friend's wedding last Saturday. The wedding ceremony was at a church and being somewhat familiar with Asian church weddings, I wasn't too surprised. Hmmm.. there is no PDA as expected, but they bowed to each other. That's sweet! There was no interpreter for the wedding sermon, so we were left to be amused by inflection and facial expressions of the pastor. At times, I knew it was a joke by the laughter and as infectious as it is, you laugh even though you've no idea what you're laughing at. As I'm returning for another 'performance tour' in Malaysia, this reminded me of the Keynotes & Praise Band trip in 2000 to my hometown.

Daniel Miller was to give the sermon (which he was also caught off-guard .. when you've worked with Martin Rude, you know!) and he was informed there would be a translator. Everything went smoothly as far as the worship and our singing. Then the most interesting part of the evening came. Daniel chose the Old Testament story of Gideon and the Midianites (Judges 7).

He began to preach, and Mr. Wong would translate from English to Cantonese after a few lines. As the sermon went on, the congregation would burst into laughter after Mr. Wong each time. Z and I were at first trying to be really polite, but we ended up holding our sides. The rest of team also started laughing even though they had no idea of what was being said. Daniel did ask us whether he was really translating the sermon, and he was. I don't think Daniel intended the sermon to be so entertaining.

There was one slip of tongue by Mr. Wong which brought guffaws. Instead of the saying one of the many -ites (Amorites, Amalekites, etc), he translated one of them as Gideon defeating the Indians. My Indian nanny understands Cantonese perfectly and she found that absolutely hilarious. The poor people from the Tamil Methodist Church. They weren't insulted but laughed just as much knowing it was a genuine mistake.

All in all, it was a great evening. People hanging on the window sills to watch us. Eight people accepted Christ. Wonderful cool weather, it had poured that afternoon. The next day they visited my alma mater and the kids loved us. A great Keynotes memory!