Translations during the Third Niger Expedition

Apparently, the fact that the (children of the) native Igbo in Sierra Leone were eager to return to their native lands for evangelism, coupled with the reports and suggestions of Crowther, informed the CMS’ decision to send native Igbo missionaries to establish a mission on the Niger. Thus, in 1857, a third expedition was sent up the Niger. This expedition arrived Onitsha with the Dayspring on July 26, 1857, and it succeeded in establishing the Niger missions. Members of the team that came included Samuel Ajayi Crowther who was the leader of the CMS Niger Mission, J. C. Taylor who was born in Sierra Leone of Igbo parents, and Simon Jonas who also participated in the first two expeditions.

Crowther sailed further to Lokoja, leaving Taylor in charge of the Niger Mission and with an eleven-point direction to guide him in overseeing the mission. The fourth item on the list was that Taylor should “attend to the reduction of the [Igbo] language, correct the primer [earlier prepared by Crowther and Jonas] in the course of using, improve and enlarge the vocabulary and make as much translations as you can”.

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Ajayi (1965: 130) suggests that Taylor’s parents did not speak the same dialect of Igbo, which implies that Taylor learnt a mixed dialect of Igbo at home in Sierra Leone. He was ordained after his studies at Fourah Bay College and pastored a church before embarking on the expedition (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 241). While still in Sierra Leone, he had started studying and translating into Igbo. He showed some of his translations to Bishop Vidal in 1854 who then “gave him instructions in orthography, asked him to collect idioms and proverbs” and encouraged him to do more translations (Hair 1967: 83). However, though a native Igbo speaker, Taylor relied on Simon Jonas to interpret for him at Onitsha (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 249). Taylor’s inability to preach to the Onitsha people in Igbo might be attributed to 1) the fact that he learnt the dialect of Igbo spoken at Sierra Leone which is markedly different from that spoken in Onitsha, and 2) he normally preached in Sierra Leone in English and so was not confident enough to preach in Igbo. It was not until 1860 before Taylor could deliver his first sermon in Igbo (Ogharaerumi 1986: 182).

All of this notwithstanding, Taylor resumed translating into Igbo shortly after arriving Onitsha. For instance, his journal entry of August 3, 1857 has it that he “[b]usily engaged in writing out the alphabet in large characters” (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 249) while the entry of August 7 has it that he was “[b]usy in writing my translation” (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 251). On September 13, 1857, he had a church service where he used his revised translation of the Lord’s Prayer in Igbo (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 271). One of the challenges Taylor faced was explaining Christian concepts to the natives. For instance, his journal entry of September 10, 1857 shows the natives’ confusion with the concept of salvation and his struggle to explain the concept to them:

I asked them about their soul. “Do you know who made you and all men?”

They replied, “Tshuku.” “What has God done for you?” “He keeps me from every thing.” “What thing do you mean?” “From war and every thing, bad as well as good.” “Which thing do you call bad?” “Amusu (witchcraft) is a bad thing.” “When any one dies, where do you think he goes?” “I think he dies, and goes to Tshuku.” “Very true,” I said: “he dies, and goes to his Maker.” “Is death an easy thing?” “No.” “But do you think a man can save himself and go where God lives?” Here one of them was puzzled, but the other caught at the

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word, thinking he could give a decisive answer, but the word “salvation” they could not fully comprehend. Both of them, after a few minutes struggling, said they did not know. Then I began simply to point out to them the meaning of that little but emphatic word “salvation,” and afterwards directed them to “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” It is through Him, and in His blood alone, we sinners can have access unto God.

They were astonished to hear the word “salvation” illustrated by a canoe being upset, and the people saved from drowning. (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 269)

One sees the natives’ confusion about the idea of salvation after death. This confusion stems from the fact that the people’s cosmology did not have such a concept. Taylor was then forced to use the imagery of being saved from a capsizing canoe³⁸ to explain salvation.

Although Taylor did not fully convince his listeners, he at least succeeded in introducing the idea, which follow up teachings would convince them of. Consequently, Taylor rounds off the day’s journal entry thus:

We had now ocular demonstration, in the mass of the heathen around us that they are not far from being enlisted under the banner of Christ. I pressed it home to them, and asked them to carry it to their friends, and tell them what they had learnt today. (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 269)

The arrival of Christian missionaries among the Igbo over the years had started influencing the peoples’ worldview. For instance, in the penultimate quote above, Taylor equates

“Tshuku” with “God”. However, Schön’s presentation of “Tshuku” above does not equate the deity to the Christian God. Even Taylor’s journal entry of August 8, 1857 describes Tshuku as a god: “I questioned him about […] Aron, the consulting place of all the Ibo tribe concerning Tshuku, their god” (Crowther and Taylor 1859: 252). So, Taylor’s identifying Tshuku as God in the quote above indicates the missionaries’ gradual appropriation of the Igbo (Aro) deity as the equivalent for the Christian God. In addition, Taylor’s question on

38 Onitsha is a riverine town and so the idea of a canoe capsizing is familiar to the natives.

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whether a man can save himself and “go where God lives” was apparently confusing, for the people perceived “Tshuku” as living at Aro and not at some space in the spiritual realm.

In recognition of his insufficient knowledge of Igbo and the need to better this, Taylor got permission from Crowther to visit Schön, the only European “expert” on Igbo language at the time, at Chatham, England. According to Ogharaerumi (1986: 183), “Taylor's visit was specifically undertaken to enable Schön give him the needed consultation on the grammar of the Igbo language”. While with Schön, Taylor was reported to have “made considerable progress in his Ibo translations; the Prayer Book selections are nearly through the press and the M.S. of the Gospel of St. Matthew is completed”³⁹.

However, Taylor and Schön disagreed on certain linguistic features of Igbo, which led to their parting ways unceremoniously. In a letter to Crowther, Henry Venn, the CMS Secretary at Salisbury Square, reports that Schön “has had a very difficult task, for Mr.

Taylor was by no means willing in the first instance to follow his guidance”. Venn adds that although Taylor “has certain talents in great perfection”, he lacks the talent of reducing a language to a grammatical or uniform system”⁴⁰. This rift would affect Taylor’s progress in translations into Igbo, discussed shortly. Meanwhile, in the early 1860s, Taylor “succeeded in translating the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians and Philemon into Isuama (Owerri) dialect of Ibo language” (Azikiwe 1961:

337). Other portions of the Bible translated into Isuama include Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians and Ephesians. These translations were published by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS).

At this juncture, it is pertinent to state that what is generally termed “Isuama” in the literature on missionary works might actually encompass words from other dialects of Igbo and even languages other than Igbo. For instance, Bersselaar (1998: 108) observes that this dialect

contained words which stem from different Igbo dialects, and even some words which seem to have been incorporated from Yoruba and the Niger

39 Colonel Dawes to Crowther, July 22, 1859, CMS CA3/L/39 (cited in Ogharaerumi 1986: 185)

40 Venn to Crowther, Dec 22, 1859, CMS CA3/L/43 (cited in Ogharaerumi 1986: 189)

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Delta languages, and thus nowadays would be considered to be from substantially different languages.

Tasie (1996b: 64) adds that although

[t]he bulk of Taylor’s work in Igbo, admittedly, was in the Isuama Igbo […]

his work sometimes also showed traces of some sort of an amalgam of the major dialects of Igbo, especially the Onitsha, Isuama, and the Igbo spoken in the Niger Delta (also known as Mbamiri Igbo). Taylor himself was basically Isuama-speaking, and he lived in Onitsha. The presence of the Mbamiri Igbo might, however, suggest that the traces of “amalgamated Igbo” in his translations were probably not by accident but a conscious attempt by Taylor to produce a more widely accepted Igbo than Isuama.

Tasie’s (1996b) use of “Mbamiri Igbo” here is rather curious. Literally, “mbamiri” is a compound word formed from mba “community” and mmiri “water/river”. So, the term refers to riverine communities. Onitsha also belongs to the riverine Igbo communities and the vibrant trade relations among these communities, as shown in Crowther and Taylor (1859), make it difficult to distinguish one dialect from another. At best, the dialects of these communities exist in a continuum such that dialectal differences become clearer among communities that are distant from one another. Be that as it may, Tasie’s (1996b) view shows that Taylor’s attempt at consciously creating an Igbo with wider acceptance foreshadowed Dennis’ “Union Igbo” expatiated below.

In 1866, Taylor completed his translation of the NT into Isuama and sent the manuscript to the CMS authorities in Salisbury Square, London, who in turn forwarded it to Schön for verification. Schön’s assessment of the translation was negative. He “advised that the manuscripts be returned to Taylor for revision in accordance with his own view of the Igbo language” (Ogharaerumi 1986: 189). He sees Taylor’s translation as “defective” and as such would not “advise the Bible Society to print them without further revision”⁴¹. In his defence, Taylor stood his ground, arguing that, being a native speaker of Igbo unlike Schön,

41 Henry Venn to Crowther, Dec 23, 1867. CMS CA/L/252 (quoted iin Ogharaerumi 1986: 190)

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his views on Igbo were superior to Schön’s: “my learned friend, Mr. Schön, cannot do better in the [lgbo] language than I who have actually been on the spot and have the advantage of acquiring it from the lips of my parents”⁴². He adds that “I cannot correct him in his native language” because “however perfect I might be in the German language, it will be impossible for me to correct a German whose language is his element”. Taylor’s insistence was not based solely on the fact that he was native Igbo, he also claims to “have read the returned MSS to many of the Ibos here and found it correct”. In other words, his field experience indicated that his views on the translations were superior to Schön’s.

Unfortunately for Taylor, the CMS authorities took sides with Schön and thus Taylor’s translation of the complete New Testament was never published.

Ogharaerumi (1986: 188 – 200) submits that the CMS’ authority’s act of taking sides with Schön against Taylor was misguided and hasty, and that an unbiased analysis of the situation would have yielded a different result and Igbo language would have been saved the over thirty years of inactivity resulting from this hasty decision. Although the exact defects Schön identified in Taylor’s translations and the various linguistic issues on which both men disagreed were not stated, Ogharaerumi (1986) suggests that the background and experiences of both men would give some insight into these grey areas.

One, Ogharaerumi (1986) insists that Taylor’s defence of his translations based on the fact that he was a native Igbo speaker unlike Schön, “can not be easily refuted. Schön could not have corrected even a mother-tongue Igbo speaker who had not done any linguistic investigation into the language”. He adds that “[w]hen we add to Taylor's mother-tongue competence the fact that he had spent at least 12 years in analysing and translating into the language in Sierra Leone and on the Niger, it is clear that he had important advantages over Schön” (Ogharaerumi 1986: 192). On the other hand, Schön was German, never mastered speaking Igbo and had a very brief and interrupted stay among Igbo native speakers to have mastered the language. As at when Schön rejected Taylor’s translations in 1864, it was almost two decades since Schön set foot on Igbo soil and so Schön must have forgotten most of what he learnt in the field.

42 Taylor to Venn, April 16th, 1867, CMS CA3/037/23 (quoted iin Ogharaerumi 1986: 192)

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Furthermore, Ogharaerumi (1986: 206) suggests that Schön’s training in Classics meant that his “knowledge of language was ‘Latinized’, because of the predominance of Latin in the study of the arts in that period. Most of the linguistic assumptions they made were coloured by their knowledge of Latin and Greek”. Thus, Schön’s views on Igbo were apparently influenced by his knowledge of Latin and Greek. In addition to this, Ogharaerumi (1986) argues that Schön’s linguistic views also must have been influenced by his native language German. He highlighted several phonological and morphological features that German does not share with Igbo, which affected the descriptions and analysis of Nigerian languages done by Schön and some other German linguists working in the field (Ogharaerumi 1986: 201 – 207).

What is more, Ogharaerumi (1986) adds that Henry Venn, having studied Classics like Schön, was biased in favour of Schön, for

since Schön and Venn shared a somewhat similar view of language, it was easier for the latter to trust the judgement of Schön than that of Taylor. In addition, Venn never had experience in a foreign country outside of Europe.

His views of European languages would have greatly influenced his opinion of other languages. It was, therefore, easier for him to accept the views of another European who had had some experience in a non-European language that it was to accept Taylor’s. (Ogharaerumi 1986: 195)

This experience apparently marked the end of Taylor’s efforts in Bible translations into Igbo, but he and his assistants at Onitsha translated other religious texts, like hymns. Not long after he was transferred to Igbebe and later to Sierra Leone. Taylor resigned from the Niger Missions in 1869 (Ogharaerumi 1986: 210).