To give you an idea of how CARLA works for getting a rough draft in Banna from the Aari Scriptures, I’ve written some CARLA rules for getting a German draft from the English. (We wouldn’t ordinarily do that because English and German aren’t closely enough related to each other, but it will give you an idea of what CARLA does.)

Before actually using CARLA to do a transfer, I need a lexicon for both languages. So I start with what I know. Let’s take an abridged version of John 3:16 in English and German.

I can make a lexicon with the following matching entries, using “standard format markers” – \e for English and \g for German:

\e God \g Gott \e so \g also \e love \g lieben \e the

\g die \e world \g Welt \e that \g dass \e he \g er

\e give \g geben \e his \g seinen \e Son \g Sohn

Note that “also” doesn’t mean the same in German as it does in English! Similarly, several words in Banna look like Aari words but have a different meaning.

Now my real lexicon for Aari and Amharic has a lot of other entries and automatically alphabetizes the words, but this gives you an idea of how I make it. I also have a “Suffix lexicon” which contains the suffixes used for conjugating verbs, etc. Here is how an entry for “past tense” would look in German and English, with \s for “Suffix”:
\s PAST
\e d / e _
\e i > a +/ give _
\g ge >, en > t +/ love _
\g en > F, e > a +/ give _

This tells CARLA that the past tense for any verb ending in “e” (that includes “love”) is formed by adding “d”, and the past tense for the verb “give” is formed by changing the “i” to “a”. I’ll have to modify the first rule when I come to a verb like “brake”, so that it gives me “broke” instead of “braked”, but I can do that easily by adding the line “\e a > o +/ brake _” before the first “\e” line. CARLA looks at the rules in order.

With just these lexical entries, CARLA will change the English sentence “God so loved the world, that he gave his Son.” into “Gott also geliebt die Welt, dass er gab seinen Sohn.”

I see that in German, the noun comes at the end of the clause, and that the adverb (also) preceeds the proper noun (Gott). To get the words in the correct order, I write the following rules into the CARLA program:

Word Order: Verb NounPhrase > NounPhrase Verb
ProperNoun Adverb > Adverb ProperNoun

CARLA will then change the English sentence “God so loved the world, that he gave his Son.”into “Also Gott die Welt geliebt, dass er seinen Sohn gab.”

This is the best CARLA can do for me. the “hat” (“has”) will need to be added by a native German speaker whose intuitive sense of discourse and syntax prompt him to put it in. That is why, when I get a CARLA draft of a portion of Scripture in Banna, I send it to the translation team in Alduba so they can make it into really good Banna. It is the native speakers who will come up with the final draft of the text, which for German would be: Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, dass er seinen Sohn gab.

As of October 2004, I have 3,245 entries in my main lexicon and 198 entries in my suffix lexicon. I also have a prefix lexicon with 4 entries, a proper name lexicon with 1,719 entries, and a loan word lexicon with 178 entries. I have written more than 2,000 rules for CARLA to make needed changes in word order, grammar and vocabulary.

This has, of course, taken a great deal of time and effort. In the process I have learned a lot about Banna grammar and syntax. Now I am able to put out a good CARLA draft of Banna scripture in a reasonable amount of time. I go over that draft to eliminate “options” that are clearly undesirable. Then I send it to translators David, Getu and Ayke. They revise it to make good Banna, and when I visit Ethiopia twice a year, we go over their drafts to be sure they accurately render the text.

CARLA is a wonderful tool which God has given us to get His Word into more languages more quickly. I am grateful that I can do most of the work in Longview, and send the drafts by email to the Banna translation team in Alduba, Ethiopia. Modern technology is indeed a blessing for the work of Bible translation. I long for the day when everyone knows how to read and everyone has God’s Word in his own language; for then everyone will have opportunity to enter into the new covenant God spoke of in Jeremiah 31:34:

” ‘No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the LORD.”