The Bible Translator: Volume 68, Issue 3

This article examines the problems and implications of translating ekklēsia in Matthew 16.18 and elsewhere. View Less

This paper is a case study in the challenges of translating the Greek New Testament into Khmer, the language of Cambodia. The paper focuses on Khmer’s honorific system of second-person pronouns in order to show the difficulties of translating across language families and to highlight the amount of theological interpretation that every Khmer translation entails. Through three examples drawn from the Gospel of John, the paper explores the challenges that Jesus’ presence at the heart of Christian piety poses for a pronominal system that encodes social values such as relation and respect. The paper ends with a reflection on the possible advantages of the study of idiolect for the translation of honorific pronouns. View Less

In the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, various kinds of passive forms are used in sentence constructions. Some have both the patients and the agents clearly specified; others have only patients. Frequently, the agent is implied, ambiguous, or even unknown. The Gun language (a language of Benin) does not have forms for passive construction; only active forms are used. In Rev 13.5, 7, 14 the unspecified agent has been identified in the 2003 Gun New Testament as the “dragon.” This paper argues that the identification of the agent should be revisited before the publication of the whole Bible. It discusses various ways passive constructions can be dealt with in translation. Contrary to the choice of identified agent in the 2003 Gun New Testament, this article supports an alternative position, one which was adopted in the 1923 Gun Bible: that is, to use an ambiguous agent in the form of the impersonal pronoun ye, translated as “one,” “someone,” “it,” “they,” and so forth. View Less

There is a strong history among the Zulu community of performing praise poetry, and a passion for composing and performing poetry continues among Zulu youth today. On the other hand, the current Zulu Bible is considered by many young people to be irrelevant or difficult to read and understand. With these two factors in mind, I conducted a study in which Zulu youth were invited to participate in basic training, after which they made their own translations of various praise psalms and then performed them before a community audience using song, rap, or spoken poetry. This paper looks at the process and benefits of inviting “ordinary speakers” to participate in the translation process, and of communicating the message through oral performance. The results are encouraging and suggest the methodology could be extended to other genres of biblical text and other language groups. View Less

The standard understanding of God’s holiness is usually described as “separation,” “transcendence,” or “infinite purity.” But when the usage of the term in certain contexts is scrutinized, Scripture reveals that it can mean “totally devoted.” According to Isaiah, this devotion of God to his people manifests itself in social justice, rescue, and restoration. When this definition is compared with the role and nature of the Holy Spirit as comforter, teacher, etc., it makes much more sense that the Spirit is described as holy. Although it may not be possible to change traditional terms for holy in many language communities, there must be a creative effort to turn the tide toward a more biblical understanding. View Less