Professor Roger Kovaciny
From UkrainianBible
Professor Roger Kovaciny is a member of the Ukrainian Bible Translation Project's translation team.
Roger currently lives in Ternopil, Ukraine with his wife Ruth. Their five children are grown and living in the United States. Roger is the only member of the team who lives in Ternopil, which gives him access to St. Sophia Seminary's library and an English Lutheran congregation. Ruth directs the English choir at church.
Roger was born in Chicago and studied at Northwestern Lutheran College in Watertown, Wisconsin. After serving parishes in Tappen, North Dakota, and Columbus, Ohio, Roger moved with his family to Ternopil to start a mission church shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Lutheran Church was blessed with quick growth and numerous congregations were founded around Ukraine. St. Sophia Seminary was established in Ternopil in the late 1990s and continues to produce new pastors for the ULC. Roger, who had been teaching Greek and Hebrew classes in the Seminary, switched to full-time translation work for the Ukrainian Bible Translation Project.
[edit] About me
The composer Salieri, comparing himself to Mozart, supposedly said he was the "patront saint of mediocrity." In that case, he's my patron saint!
When the N.I.V. was translated, over 100 scholars took 14 years to translate it. Many were experts, the best in one narrow field. But if I were an expert in anything, it could only be at the expense of being not being good enough in several other fields. (With enough reference books and computer programs, "pretty good" is "good enough".)
I'm pretty good in many languages, but an expert in none of them. I've preached in five languages on four continents, without notes, and taught five languages while speaking a sixth or seven. Our meetings are conducted in up to six languages, and my work requires proficiency in all six (I'm proficient in seven, an expert in none). I mention all these things only to help you understand my colleagues, because I am an amateur and an adolescent next to Professor Turkonyak, Dr. Kachmar and Father Smuk. It is an honor and a privilege to be working with them, and I leave every meeting more impressed than before.
[edit] About you
But enough about my occupation–what about yours? Construction, farming, plumbing, computer work, auto repair, work in a factory or in a family or with the institutionalized... I know that my place in the kingdom of God is no higher or more difficult than yours. We all specialize in one thing, and we all work together in something else. My specialty is editing Bible translations. In some countries, you can get paid for that. In Ukraine you can't–the government keeps salaries low for the sake of raising exports, and low salaries inhibit fundraising, and I could not live on what a Ukrainian lives on in any case for several reasons.I wasn't given a rent-free apartment when the Soviet Union broke up; I wasn't given an acre of land in the country to raise my food on; I have to pay for my own office and all its expenses including furniture, photocopies, computers, telecommunications and utilities; and I have expenses on two continents including the obligatory trip back home every year. (That alone would cost a year's salary for many Ukrainians; the minimum wage here is 20¢ an hour.) I'm just grateful that so many of you are willing to give an hour's pay per month or a day's pay per year so that I can continue to work here as an unpaid volunteer.
