Why the name Cinco Talentos Mídia?
“Cinco Talentos” is Portuguese for “five talents” and “mídia” is like the English word “media.” The concept comes from Matthew 25 where Jesus gave the parable of the landowner who committed his goods to his servants before traveling to a far country. His faithful servants took what they had been given and immediately went out and invested so that they would not be ashamed at his return. America is a nation that has been singularly blessed by God with resources to preach the truths of God’s Word. If we were to sum up the privileges of abundant education, financial prosperity, extensive religious freedom, powerful biblical teaching and technological advances, it is hard to imagine that we will only be held accountable for a one or two talent investment! Yet, sometimes it seems that we are more interested in seeking our own comforts and seeing that our children are comfortable or have a prosperous career, than that they become actively involved in the building of the body of Christ. We dare not continue to evidence such a “one talent” mentality! The one talent servant wasn’t the least bit concerned about his master’s interests until it was too late. The name “Cinco Talentos Mídia” is Portuguese as a reminder that this entire project was born on the foreign mission field. As missionaries with Baptist Mid-Missions in Brazil for nearly 20 years, Randy & Joan Pollard have come to realize how important it is to have resources on the creation/evolution debate in the Portuguese language. Also, they have seen first hand the difference between translated and dubbed video materials and materials that use talent speaking their own mother tongue. This project is designed to use native speakers of each target language as “presenters” so that each language version of the film will be much more readily acceptable to the target audience. The Pollards continue to serve as missionaries with Baptist Mid-Missions because this film project is truly a missionary endeavor.
The CTM logo clip shows not only a hand receiving the gold coins, but also an hour glass as a reminder that the time for investing is now! As we see events shaping up in the Middle East there is little doubt that the time for us to invest for our Savior is drawing to a close. How unfortunate it would be for God’s servants to be in the midst of burying their “talents” in the ground at the very moment when Jesus Christ returns to ask us to give an account! If God opens your heart to invest with us in this missionary endeavor of making a series of films on creation for various languages of the world, please make a generous contribution now!
Some will ask, “Why not translate the excellent DVDs put out by creation organizations like Answers In Genesis and others?”
Our experience has taught us that translating a video version of a Power Point Presentation into another language is not a wise investment for several reasons:
1) The English language is one of the most efficient languages in terms of number of words necessary. What takes 10 words in English frequently takes 14 words in most other languages. This means that a filmed segment showing a speaker rambling on for a minute or more in English will require that the translated version either leave out some information or add extra video clips to cover the time needed. Neither of these options is very desirable.
2) It is incredibly boring to watch an English speaking mouth while listening to a dubbed in translation in another language, especially if that speech segment drags on for more than about 10 – 15 seconds! Translated subscript versions are worse because the viewer ends up reading the film rather than watching it!
3) Most of the DVD products currently available on this subject are information rich with the speaker being the motion part of the film. Unless the viewer is a highly motivated fan of the creation subject, there is little appeal that will captivate passive viewers. This problem is much worse when the film is translated and dubbed into a foreign language.