Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond
My father, Ronnie Sim, who has died aged 81, worked for many years in Africa, helping people from various language groups to translate the Bible into their own tongue.
Much of his time was spent in Ethiopia, where his biggest project was to facilitate the Bible’s translation into the Hadiyya language. But he also had lengthy spells in Kenya, where he helped to create an infrastructure to support Bible translators to do their work more efficiently. There are still a large number of languages that do not have their own translation of the Bible.
Ronnie was born in Glasgow to Thomas Sim, a grocer’s assistant, and Helen (nee Blair), a shop assistant. His family later moved to Largs, and his secondary schooling took place at Ardrossan academy. He then studied science at the University of Glasgow, beginning with astronomy and moving on to chemistry. After attending Jordanhill Teacher Training College he began his career as a chemistry teacher back at Ardrossan academy, in 1966.
In 1969 he married Margaret Brisbane, the same year that he moved to teach at Glenurquhart school in Drumnadrochit. In 1974, however, he felt another calling, and acted upon it by joining Wycliffe Bible Translators, a not-for-profit company that makes Bibles for people to read in their own language.
The following year he, Margaret and their two young children ended up in Kenya, where Ronnie led a formal project to ascertain which of the language groups of the country were properly served – or not – by existing Bibles.
Simultaneously he and Margaret did MAs in linguistics at the University of Nairobi before moving in 1980 to Ethiopia, where Ronnie became project leader for Wycliffe’s project to translate the Bible into the Hadiyya language, which did not at the time have its own version.
As Ronnie had only a working knowledge of Hadiyya, the translation was done by a team of trained Ethiopians under his supervision, either by hand or on Amharic typewriters. When computers later became available, he had to work out how to configure the script to fit within the new systems and programs available.
From 1987 onwards Ronnie studied for a PhD, initially in Ethiopia and then back in the UK at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the grammatical aspects of Hadiyya. Once he had completed that in 1990 he went back to Kenya to help two colleges, the Pan Africa Christian College and Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, to set up degree courses in Bible translation for students from all over Africa.
The courses worked on the basis that Bible translators need to understand the historical context of the material they are working with, so as to fully capture the meaning and convey it to the target audience.
Ronnie returned to the UK in 2008 to become a consultant in the field, making trips to Ethiopia, Zambia and Nigeria.
His last years, from 2013 onwards, were spent back in Largs. The final Bible he worked on as a consultant was the Nkoya Bible for people in Zambia.
He is survived by Margaret, their children, Gordon, Shona, Lorna, Gillies and me, eight grandchildren and his sister, June.
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