Asides

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Humpty-humpty?

Something for all Bible translators, their advisors and the eventual readers and pastors to consider

Shoutouts for colleagues…

Colleague Ben has a great blog where he writes rather interesting articles on Bible translation issues sparked by his consulting work. It’s academic in style but very accessible I think. His latest post has some of his own translation of Philippians, and there’s soon going to be something about accuracy in translation. Ben also is something …

Where the ‘Church’ of Scotland is concerned, truth is stranger than fiction

Having just chuckled at this (Vatican to begin accepting competitor baptisms), I now read this (Church of Scotland ‘to introduce online baptism’ in bid to boost membership). Which one is the spoof? <sigh /> Meanwhile, real churches are really growing worldwide without them resorting to baptising the inevitable adbots that make up a lot of online ‘engagement’ these days.

It is by fate you have been saved (!?)

It’s a little unfortunate that the ‘th’ sound in English is comparatively rarely used in other languages. And so it would be far too easy to mis-hear Nigerian colleagues talking about “fate” rather than “faith”. There is a rather important difference of course. Sometimes the context or expectation makes things clear, but other times it doesn’t. It …

Making dictionaries with WeSay

Here’s a great site about using WeSay to document languages and collect words for dictionaries from someone working in East Congo.

Headline mismatch

OK, headlines sometimes grab the reader unjustifiably, but this is a bit too much: RAIL WORKERS’ WIVES DESERT On 20 June, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) commenced long distance intercity service between Minna and Kaduna (158km)… and if you read the (mildly interesting) article you’ll find out it’s about Nigeria opening up railways, but nothing …

Taking things littorally

Did you know that the word littoral existed? Or the word lory? Came across both when browsing the dictionary of a small Pacific language. I thought they were typos; my vocabulary has just been expanded!