Spiritual Beings
My smart friend and colleague Ben Kuwitzky quotes from Martin Luther: “If God had wanted me to die thinking I was a clever fellow, he would not have got me into the business of translating the Bible.” …and even more so when you’re working outside your own culture. I was reminded of one of my …
Mercy seat or atoning sacrifice?
One of the newest English language Bible translations has got an update. It’s not radical. About the only remarkable change they highlight is switching the translation in Romans 3:25 from the key term atoning sacrifice to mercy seat. As a committee we adopted “mercy seat” for a number of reasons, but we recognize that “propitiation” …
Ishɛ translation update: I’m a wondering about ‘amma’…
Years ago when starting work with the Koro Ashɛ translation team (whose language is called Ishɛ) the translators asked me about an issue they had. There were too many Hausa words in it. In particular the word ‘amma‘. It’s a common conjunction rather like English ‘but‘ and you do actually hear it frequently in conversation. …
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… Mary Slessor
Did you know, that… a corner of Nigeria featured on a British banknote for many years all because of a lass from Dundee? Over the years in Nigeria as I’ve got to meet people from different places and we have talked about where we’re from, it’s been notable how many people know (roughly) about the …
Languages of Wilder Confusion: Keep
The simple word keep couldn’t easily be confused could it? And yet in Nigerian English it refers to storing something somewhere — putting something away. So a friend told us about a time when a neighbourhood child came to her house and was playing with a little toy and the friend said she should keep …