Zephyr has posted another in his series about Bible translation checking in Papua New Guinea. His latest post gets right into the heart of translation, and may be of interest if you’ve ever wondered what an expatriate translation consultant spends their time doing each day.
When we came to Luke 9:24, that was a verse that was hard to translate. Here is what the NASB says…
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.
The first draft of the Onnele translations all looked something like this (with literal English back translation)…
Le mana samo wola ye laip wone’ni, laip wone’ni ese fafaile. Mana fei samo wola ye laip wone’ni ka yupene ki, laip wone’ni ese uporo.
If a person really livers [= thinks] continuously life of him/her, life of him/her will be ruined. Person [who] not really livers [= thinks] continuously life of him/her and follows me, life of him/her will be good.
If this kind of thing isn’t your cup of tea, you may be encouraged to know that there is a lot more to the Bible translation task than sitting down with mother-tongue translators and checking a translation sentence by sentence. There are a huge variety of other roles that are needed, from project managers to trainers, literacy workers to finance officers, school teachers and pastoral support workers.
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