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 …
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 …
Where’s home?
Kids who grow up across cultures and countries often get mildly flummoxed by the innocuous question “Where are you from?” Of course it’s common enough for Nigerians to ‘be from’ a place they’ve never actually visited, but we’re a fairly complicated mixture.
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 …
Biblish Idioms: Hearts melting
Here’s a challenge: Read this first sentence: Our hearts melted as we saw them approach. Then consider what we expect to come next… Which seems more suitable? The little children looked so cute, we couldn’t be angry any more. The warriors were armed to the teeth and utterly fearsome. They’re quite different aren’t they?
Languages of Wilder Confusion: Peculiar
Every week I drive past Peculiar International College and a shop titled Peculiar Cuts/Drycleaning. There’s a school bus (above) emblazoned with Peculiar Child. Why do I find this odd?
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 …
Languages of Wilder Confusion: Win
Would you encourage Christians to want to win people for Christ? Yes! Would you suggest they fight and kill them to do this? What?!! And yet that could very easily be a conclusion people reach. How? Well in Nigerian English people use ‘win’ where British English uses ‘defeat’. Source 1: Sunday school ‘this small group …
Languages of Wilder Confusion
Most people around the world speak more than one language. That shouldn’t be news, but in the English-speaking monolingual world, we may need to remind ourselves of this fact. One language may be used at home and informally, but in a multilingual world, it’s useful to be able to communicate with people who speak different …