David Ker works as part of the team translating the New Testament into the Nyungwe language in Mozambique. He has just posted a fascinating account of checking John Chapter 3 with the team.
I can’t really describe for you what it’s like to get to take part in a Bible translation. It’s something I always dreamed of doing. But now I know that it is less and more than what I imagined. Very often the bulk of our time is spent ironing out seemingly inconsequential points. For example, yesterday we spent close to thirty minutes trying to decide what Moses did with the serpent in John 3:14. Did he lift it up? Did he hang it on a tree? The verse is tied to its surroundings and of course to the original passage in Numbers 21. For theological reasons, I was pushing for something like “lift up” with a secondary meaning of “exalt.” In the end the translators were only satisfied with the word for “to hang.” Then it took a long time to decide if they should include the information “on a stick.” This was problematic because pamuti can also mean “on a tree.” In the end, we left that out and decided to just move on and look at it again with the reviewers. … read more
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Tags: Bible translation
