Something for all Bible translators, their advisors and the eventual readers and pastors to consider
I’d been very struck by snippets on BBC World Service about the difficulties and yet power of translating books. Here are a few interviews. There are things here for Bible translators to reflect on. I must admit though that ‘Judas’ I found rather disappointing and annoying in the clip we were played. It seems rather …
For hundreds of years people had access to well preserved Egyptian hieroglyphics without knowing what they meant. The Rosetta stone helped to break the code and since then the meaning has been deduced, though we still don’t know exactly the sound of the words. This is a great reminder of how important it is that …
One of the Koro Ashɛ translators sadly just heard he lost his step-mother. I offered my condolences and (I really should know better by now than to do this, but) I asked somewhat crassly when she had become his step-mother. At that point he looked confused. But of course, I’d asked a silly question. I …
These days in Nigeria it seems that formal education is pretty much exclusively an English-only affair and seminaries are no exception. So the experimental elective Sociolinguistics for Pastors running in ECWA Theological Seminary Kagoro has sought to shake things up a little. And with the encouragement of Provost and Chaplain, we have tried to encourage the setting …
The Scripture Engagement department of SIL Nigeria is involved in an exciting movement that is helping people engage with mother tongue Bible translations! This video introduces Scripture Listening and Reading Groups (SLRGs) and the impact they are having in language communities.
Looking back I sometimes think I spent large chunks of my childhood not really knowing what on earth was going on, and being quite aware of it (yet not particularly troubled by it). And I’ve come to realise that being confused, and being aware of being confused is actually quite a helpful thing. In particular, …
It’s been a while since I wrote anything about the Gworog project. That’s largely because the project has faced personnel management issues and then a funding crisis, and then technical problems and they just haven’t had much for me to work on. I’ve also been pretty busy. But yesterday I had a (nother) meeting with …
For several months we were all mildly tickled by a massive billboard advert we would pass on our way back from church each Sunday. In astonishing simplicity it proclaimed “Correct Beer” in huge lettering beside a row of bottles. I was about to snap a picture but just before I did they changed the advert. (Fortunately Google …
Sometimes – and especially when crossing cultures and using languages of wider communication – I come across things that people have written where I understand all the words but haven’t the faintest notion about what is really meant. Here’s a prime example, from the Nigerian news site naij.com: He said: “This year will be a year …