Are we gospelly?
A rare guest appearance from Julie! (Perhaps I’ll persuade her to contribute more here.) Sometimes we may think we have thought of something for the first time and it turns out that someone else got in there before us. In Bible translation work nowadays we are committed to using local languages to express Biblical concepts, …
12 years 4 months + 19 days since we were commissioned
It’s 12 years, 4 months and 19 days since we were commissioned in the Buchanan Street building just before we headed to Kenya. Much has changed since then hasn’t it? We went to Nairobi to begin 2 very useful years of study and training in Bible translation. We were overjoyed when Rebekah joined us after …
Discourse Analysis and Translation: an introduction
I’ve been doing lots of ‘discourse’ study recently and some people have asked how they can find out more about it. The people to read: Teach-yourself courses for discourse discovery for source and target languages and translation between them Steve Nicolle: Narrative Discourse and Translation – example from Acts 16 (Free direct download PDF) Steve …
Did you know… William Tyndale
It’s rather easy for us to forget that some things very familiar and obvious to us are not so widely known. So we’re going to start a regular ‘did you know’ section to our newsletter, so you can show off to your friends be well informed. Did you know, that… A hundred years or so …
Did you know… John Wycliffe
It’s rather easy for us to forget that some things very familiar and obvious to us are not so widely known. So we’re going to start a regular ‘did you know’ section to our newsletter, so you can show off to your friends be well informed. Did you know, that… Wycliffe Bible Translators is named …
Village visit
In late April, four of the Ashɛ translation team were in Gardi — deep inside Ashɛ land — to greet chiefs and others, and to participate in an Ishɛ language service on the Sunday. While Arams often complains about how things aren’t as they used to be, many children and adults swamped Moses’ house to …
Why discourse study makes great translator training
2018 was something of a departure from normal patterns for Ashe and for me. To the surprise of many, I did almost no checking of translation with Ashe, but focussed on studying 6 Ashe stories – some true, some folk tales. I had reasons to think this was absolutely necessary, and even though it’s taken …
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 …
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 …
Naboth: A Faithful Farmer in God’s Vineyard
Just under 2 weeks ago we were shocked by the news of a colleague’s sudden death. Naboth Musa was only 23 years old, but had been a tremendous answer to prayer for the venerable Duya Bible Translation project. Most recently I had helped get him and his colleagues set up to record several books of …