The Bible Translator: Volume 22, Issue 2

Kanji, words borrowed from Chinese, are generally erudite. Terse and pithy, they are a temptation to be avoided in producing a colloquial NT. The alternative to these for technical concepts is circumlocution. About 1850 kanji are unavoidable, accounting for 47% of words written, and they often entail homonyms when read aloud, causing significant confusion, such that go and say, living-being and saint sound the same. More bothersome is style-level which differs not only with respect to class, education, age and written/oral use, but also sex and psychological distance. In literal translation Jesus appears rude. The movement toward abolishing honorific prefixes, pronouns and verbs, unfamiliar to common people is gaining, especially among the young. View Less

Several editors and commentators in NT MSS tend to suppress subject-pronouns as superfluous (e.g. Jn. 18:38, 2 Cor. 11:29). In these and other instances the free pronoun offers emphasis of contrast. View Less

Reports on translators’ seminars and institutes held in 1970 and publications by the UBS. View Less

The Peve (Chad) word for God is Ifray derived from Ya (mother) and fray (sky). The natural pronoun seemed feminine; native-speakers objected to coining Befray (father-sky) and suggested Mum (he) as the pronoun, but outside the church the habit forced Ta (she). In translating the Lord’s Prayer the solution reads, “God (Ifray) who is in heaven; we are your children,” avoiding “Our Mother.” View Less

Seeks a reading improving upon the usual literal translation and offers, “Your neck is...round and smooth. A thousand soldiers surrender their shields to its beauty.” View Less

The laity have a task more urgent than learning a religious jargon in understanding the Bible message. Translators must work to reduce it to everyday language, using not merely exegesis but linguistics and cultural anthropology in team work, to translate not merely words but ideas through dynamic equivalence. View Less

Translators need ways of measuring the success of their work. The author presents his method of statistical evaluation of translation into a Rhodesian language. View Less