Sometimes I feel rather overwhelmed by the task we have of rendering the Hebrew Bible in the Monkolé language in a way which is faithful to the original text and yet as far as possible understandable to a Monkolé reader (or listener). Fortunately I am not working alone! I have my Monkolé team mates and some very good resources on my computer.
Just recently, as I was working on Exodus 23:24, I read about the Israelites being instructed to break down the “pillars” or, in another translation, “sacred pillars” of the Canaanite people. This had been translated in Monkolé as “push over the stones they have put in place”. My first question was to know what these “pillars” represented, and here my Logos resources came in extremely helpful. I searched for the term “pillars”, which brought up more than 4,000 examples. I scrolled down, found “The Archaeological Encyclopaedia of the Holy Land”, and opened up the different instances of the word there. It gave me the Hebrew word massebah and an explanation of how these pillars were set up and used by the different Canaanite peoples in their cultic practices. Since it said they were stones (not the highly polished columns I tend to think of when I hear the word “pillars”) I supposed that the word “stones” would be fine in Monkolé, but my second question was to know whether a Monkolé hearing the sentence “push over the stones they have put in place” would realise it had religious overtones, and there I can only rely on my co-workers' mother tongue knowledge! We had quite a lengthy discussion about this, but finally agreed with the youngest member of the team that since the instruction is placed with other prohibitions of idol worship, it should be clear to your average reader that these were no ordinary stones.
I am not translating into English, so this is by the by, but if I were, I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to translate massebah by “standing stones”. The photo in the AEHL looked more like a standing stone, and I would automatically associate “standing stones” with some kind of religious practices, which is not the case with “pillars”.
Another example, which reminded us not to translate on automatic pilot, was Exodus 4:6 which says that Moses' hand became leprous and “like snow”. Where the Bible describes things as being “white like snow”, we translate “white like cotton”. Fortunately the commentary I'm reading pointed out that this verse doesn't say “white”, and that quite probably it means “flaky like snow”. We were able to find a Monkolé word which means “flaky” and have avoided introducing cotton into a context where it wasn't relevant!
Just recently, as I was working on Exodus 23:24, I read about the Israelites being instructed to break down the “pillars” or, in another translation, “sacred pillars” of the Canaanite people. This had been translated in Monkolé as “push over the stones they have put in place”. My first question was to know what these “pillars” represented, and here my Logos resources came in extremely helpful. I searched for the term “pillars”, which brought up more than 4,000 examples. I scrolled down, found “The Archaeological Encyclopaedia of the Holy Land”, and opened up the different instances of the word there. It gave me the Hebrew word massebah and an explanation of how these pillars were set up and used by the different Canaanite peoples in their cultic practices. Since it said they were stones (not the highly polished columns I tend to think of when I hear the word “pillars”) I supposed that the word “stones” would be fine in Monkolé, but my second question was to know whether a Monkolé hearing the sentence “push over the stones they have put in place” would realise it had religious overtones, and there I can only rely on my co-workers' mother tongue knowledge! We had quite a lengthy discussion about this, but finally agreed with the youngest member of the team that since the instruction is placed with other prohibitions of idol worship, it should be clear to your average reader that these were no ordinary stones.
I am not translating into English, so this is by the by, but if I were, I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to translate massebah by “standing stones”. The photo in the AEHL looked more like a standing stone, and I would automatically associate “standing stones” with some kind of religious practices, which is not the case with “pillars”.
Another example, which reminded us not to translate on automatic pilot, was Exodus 4:6 which says that Moses' hand became leprous and “like snow”. Where the Bible describes things as being “white like snow”, we translate “white like cotton”. Fortunately the commentary I'm reading pointed out that this verse doesn't say “white”, and that quite probably it means “flaky like snow”. We were able to find a Monkolé word which means “flaky” and have avoided introducing cotton into a context where it wasn't relevant!
2 comments:
interesting - i had heard about the white like snow being a difficult thing to translate before but wasn't aware that it was flaky.
amazing stuff!
A friend a few years ago was working with SIL and I remember one of her training exercises was about how to translate "wine" for an island people who had no concept of alcohol. Fascinating!
"Ganbatte" as they say in Japanese ("keep going/good luck/give your best" roughly translated ;))
Blessings.x
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