The Friends of the Mars Hill Library will be hosting Lee Ballard on October 14 at 1PM at the Mars Hill Public Library. His presentation will be titled, "A New Written Language."
In August, 1961, Lee Ballard moved to a remote mountain village in the Philippines. His ultimate objective was to translate the New Testament into the local language, Ibaloy, and produce literacy materials and linguistic descriptions. He learned the language by immersion and progressed from pointing to objects to giving advice speeches at weddings. The New Testament and Ibaloy hymnal were published in 1979. From 2006-2011, he assembled a dictionary and grammar book for Ibaloy that is now used in all ibaloy schools. It received a Philippiine National Book Award in 2012.
His presentation for the Mars Hill Friends of the Library will include a discussion of translation problems across unrelated languages (Greek/English-Ibaloy).