Biblish Idioms: Hearts melting
Here’s a challenge: Read this first sentence: Our hearts melted as we saw them approach. Then consider what we expect to come next… Which seems more suitable? The little children looked so cute, we couldn’t be angry any more. The warriors were armed to the teeth and utterly fearsome. They’re quite different aren’t they?
A Host of Problems
In the course of trying to compare the style of natural storytelling in Koro Wachi language with what’s in the Bible, we looked at a seasonally appropriate passage: “That time, angels that accepted strangers in heaven many appeared and they came with the angels.” Luke 2:13, the Koro Wachi translation draft, as explained in …
The Lord is my Goat Hunter
One of my favourite short articles about Bible translation was written 56 years ago by Constance Naish and Gillian Story working among Tlingit people in Alaska. They reflect on how the interpreters for the first missionaries there 100 years ago (mis-)understood the Bible. It’s comic and tragic and repeated in some similar way every day …
Unpicking Biblish: witness
Abstract: ‘witness’ in the Bible tends to mean telling people about something rather than seeing it. This is not normal English. The following definitions hopefully explain the senses given by the Greek word martys and martureo, and the word they’re often translated by in English. μαρτυς noun 1. one who testifies in legal matters, 2. one …
Folk Linguistics: How many tenses does English have?
How do we know how many tenses English has? Well, we’ve been taught it. What were you taught? I think normally the basic answer is past, present and future: “I came; I come; I will come.” Then someone (probably someone who did some Latin) will chime in with perfect or pluperfect: “I have come; I had …
Accordance Bible Software Updates may use up GBs of unnecessary space
Sometimes storage space just seems to disappear. I just got to the bottom of some unnecessary wasted space on my Mac which I hadn’t encountered before. Accordance Bible software (very useful) uses the Sparkle service for updates. I discovered over 15GB of old versions of the Accordance app and updaters sitting quietly in an invisible …
The Bible in Hausa: Over 100 years of efforts
I recently came across a very interesting review of the history of the Hausa Bible up to the 1979/1980 edition, by history professor Musa Gaiya in 1993. The Hausa Bible of 1980 is a notable publishing event in the history of Bible translation. The author tells the story of the leading personalities responsible for this …
Languages of Wilder Confusion: Wonderful
“The motorbike fell, and my computer was crushed and it was wonderful,” said a Nigerian friend. Now there’s nothing unusual in that statement for a Nigerian, but I think most British folk would be surprised. For Brits and Americans, Wonderful is just another way of saying ‘very good’. But in Nigerian English it means something surprising …
Languages of Wilder Confusion: Peculiar
Every week I drive past Peculiar International College and a shop titled Peculiar Cuts/Drycleaning. There’s a school bus (above) emblazoned with Peculiar Child. Why do I find this odd?
In Christ
I had an interesting chat over the summer with someone wrestling with how to communicate ‘in Christ‘ in his location/language. This is an ongoing and troubling translation issue, because clearly ‘in Christ’ is an important topic in Paul’s writing and yet a little difficult to talk about clearly because it’s actually rather odd English. ‘In …