A simple, straightforward chapter of the Bible contains a real gotcha for the translator.
Category: Bible Translation
It is difficult, close to impossible, for speakers of a prominent language like English to understand what it is like to have a minority language as your mother tongue. English speakers can assume that things will be translated for them, that they can get by in foreign countries even if they don’t know the language […]
Bible translation as an antidote to missionaries!
If you are translating the Bible then you are not interpreting it, right? Well, as with many issues in translation, things are not quite as black and white as many people think.
Translation and Tribalism
The reality is that the major Bible translations in use today are all good, and beyond good, translations. There is no longer a “best” translation but instead a basket full of exceptional translations.
Me on Contextualisation
A look back at an old video of me talking about contextualisation.
If we care for people but we don’t make the link to the story of God’s love in Christ, then all we are doing is being nice – it isn’t mission in any meaningful sense.
The current research has challenged the standard accusation against Christian mission according to which it constituted “colonization of the mind.” Similarly, the accusation that missionaries served as agents of “cultural imperialism” has been subjected to critique.
The job of the translator is to find a way to express things in the target language so that they trigger the same thoughts as Paul first sparked off in the minds of his readers.
Whichever way you look at it and with all of the possible caveats in place, there is still huge amount of Scripture translation work that remains. Suggestions that the task of Bible translation is close to completion are very premature.