Valuing God’s Images
Two weeks ago, shortly after protests began over the gratuitous public murder of George Floyd, the chapter of Bible to read with my daughters was Numbers 35. It couldn’t be more relevant for contemporary America… and actually the whole world. “ ‘If a man strikes someone with an iron object so that he dies, he …
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” …
What progress in 8½ years in Nigeria?
It’s good to look back on what we hoped to do when we first went to Nigeria in 2011 and assess our progress. My hope had been that I’d go with my English, knowledge of Bible and theology and Biblical languages, and meet translators who spoke some English, as well as their language and rather …
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 …