by By Phares Barine
A few Saturdays back I spent the day at a family do in Gachoka, among the Mbeere people of Embu County in Kenya. I was in the company of a busload of gregarious village folk from the Muthambi community of Tharaka Nithi County. Come time for introductions and suddenly my translation antenna started to bleep.
The first Mbeere man opened his mouth to introduce his wife and the Muthambi menfolk burst into guffaws and slapping of one another’s back. Where a Muthambi man would have referred to his wife as, gina wa jiana (mother of (my) children) the Mbeere gentleman now purred, “Uyu niwe mwongia!” (This is the one who suckles [my children]).
The term so impressed me that when our turn came to present our families, I too gallantly presented my wife thus: “Uyu niwe mwongia!” amidst more merriment.
Gina wa jiana and mwongia are cultural signals. Mwongia carries much more though; it is loaded with an element of exciting sensual richness. The two communities’ concept of “wife” goes beyond the mere social and biological function that the English language puts on it — that of keeping a man company or giving birth. To them she is also the nurturer, the insurance to the successful growth of the baby and a symbol of the survival and continuity of the family into the next generation.
For these two communities Gina wa jiana and Mwongia would, therefore, make the perfect translations for the term “wife”, right? Not quite. When translating the Bible, both the Mbeere and the Muthambi translator put his community’s rich idiom aside and translated “wife” as Muka. Why so?
Unlike in other types of translations where the task is a straightforward case of transfer of message from language to another, in translating the Bible one finds himself laden with a host of considerations. Among these are the very nature of the text he is to translate. Others are cultural issues, the choice of the source text, the status of the language of translation and even the purpose for the translation. Add to this the various other contexts that surround any human interaction, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what kind of work the Bible translator does.
But what is Bible translation?
Basically, Bible translation is the re-telling, as accurately as possible, the meaning of the original message as recorded in the Bible, in a way that is clear and natural in the language into which the translation is being made. In translating the Bible then, the translator is required to re-tell the original message that God sent to Man through his various chosen messengers. The message is sacrosanct — tell it as it was told in the beginning, accurately. It should be communicated clearly to the receptor audience, and in a natural manner that rhymes with the language of the receiver.
This holy message was originally crafted for a particular audience, who for the Old Testament were primarily Jewish, and was communicated in their own language –Hebrew. For the New Testament, the audiences were much more far-flung, covering not just Palestine but also the Gentile civilizations (Greece and the areas that were under the Roman empire), which went beyond the traditional “Land of the Bible.”
These messages were designed for people who inhabited specific geographical landscapes, climatic patterns as well as other ecological realities such the animals, plants and general land use. Moreover, these audiences existed at definite historical periods and had their own cultural setups.
The language of the New Testament was originally Koine Greek (though the Synoptic Gospels- Mathew and Mark mostly – may have been written in Hebrew originally).
The very purpose for which these messages were written may not necessarily be similar to those that necessitate translators to toil to reproduce them for every other race.
Reasons for Bible translations are varied. The most popular purpose for the translated Word is for evangelization — to ensure that more people get to know God and to help Man find meaning and direction in this tempestuous world.
Some translations are for scholarly and educational purposes; others are literary endeavors. Yet others are for use in churches, for liturgical and teaching purposes, and as an effort to upgrade earlier versions. Some Bible translations may be done even as a business or for personal reasons. An American parent is said to have done translation of the Bible so his young child could read and understand the word of God early enough.
Whatever the reason, a translator is a crucial link in the process, as Professor Aloo Mojola points out in his book, Issues in Bible Translation: “For the vast majority of people, the Bible that they know and read or hear is a translated Bible, one written in a language that they speak and understand, a domesticated Bible that by means of a translator’s mediation has crossed boundaries of time and space, of language and culture, of ancient political, economic, historical and religious environments and formations to those of our own time and place.” (Aloo Otsotsi Mojola pp29-30.)
Today the translator has made it possible for the holy Word to reach every corner of the world, with 3,756 of the world’s 7,396 languages boasting some translated portion of the Bible.
Today the translator has made it possible for the holy Word to reach every corner of the world, with 3,756 of the world’s 7,396 languages boasting some translated portion of the Bible.
In achieving all this, the translator must show fidelity to the original text; he is not to tamper with the message, the historical situation, the cultural background nor the geographical locality. The Bible translator is much like the midwife whose work is to ensure that the baby is delivered safely and is wholesome. She provides antenatal care to the mother and attends to the baby’s passage from its original dwelling place and into its new world. She may wash the baby, oil it and clothe it, and even powder it. But she cannot purport to change its natural form or remold it to her own liking. If the baby she delivers is too dark skinned, she cannot decide to lighten its hue; if its nose is too short, she dares not tug at it, to a length that makes her happy. The baby is not hers!
But let us push the midwife- baby analogy one step further, if only for the sake of the baby. The baby is leaving its mother for sure and is headed for adoption. When the midwife acts as the agency that processes the adoption, she must understand the needs of the foster mother and accommodate those needs. And since the translator is a servant to the sponsor or financier of the translation project he’s involved in, he has to listen to the sponsor (most times Church fathers) who hands him this set of instructions to be followed in doing the translation:
- Receptor audience (who benefits from the translation)
- The intended use for the translation
- Kind of translation to be done
- Language to be used and its level of advancement
- The source text to be used.
The above set of instructions (technically called the Translation Brief) would seem to offer a window of opportunity for him to be able to midwife the Holy Scripture to a new community.
To what extent can the translator use these instructions to successfully deliver the baby and get it adapted to the new Mwongia and Gina wa jiana cultural motherhood? What if the foster mother says, “This baby is not mine” and rejects it? Clearly, the translator is hemmed in by the prescriptive nature of the material that he has to translate, often into a radically new environment.
Phares Barine is involved in translating the Bible into the Muthambi/Mwimbi dialect.
