Category: Translation Thoughts (Page 3 of 3)

Literal or Free Translations?

 

Dave Brunn is Dean of Academics for New Tribes Mission (NTM) USA and is a missionary, translator and educator. For over twenty years he and his wife Nancy served the Lamogai people of PNG through church planting, literacy training, Bible translation and consultation. He has written a book (One Bible, many versions: Are all translations created equal) that outlines some of the difficulties in calling a particular translation “literal” or “free”. His thoughts are as follows:

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Drive-through Bibles?

Wycliffe Associates (WA), an affiliate of Wycliffe Bible Translators, USA, has come up with a financial plan that they claim will work for Bible translation programs in vernacular languages in areas of the world where the NT is still lacking. In an electronic flyer requesting money, they advertise that a donor can “help national translators give people God’s Word in WEEKS!” To me, this is scary!

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A Tale of Two Translations

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  So begins the oft quoted line from A Tale of Two Cities (one in England, one in France) by Charles Dickens.

My story begins, “It was the best of translation responses, it was the worst of translation responses.”  I refer to two translations into disparate dialects of the Kewa language (PNG) which we initiated in 1958 and concluded in 2005.

The two translations are in a sense separate stories but in another sense (like London and Paris during the French Revolution and Dicken’s story) they are intertwined.

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Jesus the real vine

 

I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener”—so runs the translation of John 15:1 according to The Good News Bible (American Bible Society 1976).  It presented two initial metaphors for translation: ‘the true vine’ and ‘Father as gardener’.

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