“In the beginning was the Word”: Blogs by Bible translators · Global Voices
This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.
Computer support for Bible translators in Nairobi
This week Christians (apart from those following the Julian calendar) will celebrate the birth of <PERSON>. Christianity appears in many forms around the world and has around 2.2 billion adherents. In this post we take a look at the blogs of the people trying to make sure Christian scripture can be understood in as many languages as possible – Bible translators.
According to the figures provided by one major Bible translation partnership, there are about 350 million people who do not have any of the Bible available in their own language, and there are currently more than 1,900 active translation projects. An “Audio Bible ministry” has recorded the New Testament in 500 languages – such as Chamacoco in Paraguay, Pangasinan in the Philippines, Bodo in India, and Kupsabiny in Uganda. In the Peruvian Amazon, a group of tribal churches is working on translating the Bible into native languages. In Ethiopia a local church is involved in Bible translation projects within the country, and in sending missionaries to Asia and to other parts of Africa.
Answering a need
Last year <PERSON>, who blogs as Cornish Man in Africa was happy to learn that a project he helped to set up had just published Genesis in Lama, a language spoken in Togo, Benin and Ghana. He quoted a man who was delighted by the book:
“I couldn’t make it to the dedication of the book of Genesis last Saturday, but I spent the whole of the following day reading the copy that my neighbour had bought. Later in the week, I cycled over from my village to Kanté, a round trip of about twelve miles, just so that I could buy my own copy. I’m so impressed with it. French is difficult for me, but it is so clear in Lama. Even if I die today, I can say that I was able to read the first translated book of the Old Testament in <PERSON>. I’m grateful to God for that.”
<PERSON> quotes <PERSON>, a pastor in Bambalang village in Cameroon, where a language called Chirambo is spoken:
“The people will know and will believe that Christianity is their thing when they see it in their language. 926
In the past — and I think still now — many think that Christianity is the white man’s religion. And I think part of it is that they don’t have it in their language. And I think that, truly, if it was also their thing, why is it not in their own language? Why did God not also speak in their language? So, I think that having the Bible in their language will make them feel that Christianity also is their thing.”
Challenges
However, translating the Bible is not a simple task. <PERSON> wrote recently at the Better Bibles Blog about his experience overseeing a translation project in an African country (whose name he doesn’t mention):
I recently returned from Africa, where I was working with a translation of the Gospel of Luke into a language that has had no previous Bible translation and a culture that has had very little contact with Christianity. I was not responsible for producing the translation into this language, but I was responsible for evaluating the translation. This was a very isolated language group, geographically and culturally. […] As to be expected, there were some translation challenges when it came to certain terms for flora and fauna and geography. Though there are sheep and cows, this group has no donkeys or camels, and no words for them. […] This brings us to the verse in <PERSON> that reads, in this language, “It is more easy for a hippo to pass in the hole of a needle than a rich person to accept that God can be king over him.” This is the English backtranslation of Luke 18:25. Interesting! Is this legitimate, or, for the sake of accuracy, do you have to insist that a word for “camel” be borrowed into the language to translate this verse? I have a hard time saying that the translation is not accurate and legitimate. I kind of like it, really. Now, obviously, if you were looking for a match for the Greek word κάμηλος, this target language word backtranslated as “hippo” wouldn’t seem to be a good match. But if you widen your perspective a bit, and don’t just look at words but rather at meanings in context, then in this particular context, a target language word for “hippo” is arguably a good translation of Greek κάμηλος. 575