Somewhat late in the day it is dawning on me that a lot of frustration can be avoided if Bible translators (and their supporting personnel) agree and make their translation brief* explicit early on in their work. Secondly, that translation brief would best be informed by understanding the sociolinguistic/multilingual situation the translation is entering. Perhaps …
Some people who look at my Paratext interlinearizer window are somewhat surprised by the display. What I really like about the Interlinearizer in Paratext is that you can adapt the HTML which powers the display by adjusting the files in the C:\Program Files\Paratext 7\Interlinear folder. Here’s what I’ve changed and why:
Occasionally I end up staying with children in Sunday school at our church in Jos and so sometimes end up hearing some of the stories and memory verses. Memory verse are a fundamental part of Sunday should for children in Nigeria and they will often patiently practice and repeat them for 20 minutes or so …
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 …
Looking through a thesis for a friend at Kagoro seminary I was stumped by one particular word: ‘cameliously’. The context? “The instrument used in this research was carefully, cameliously designed…” Are you any the wiser? I wasn’t and I consulted various dictionaries and asked friends. No-one had ever heard of the word. Various possibilities were suggested including …
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.