Today was really fascinating and a lot of fun. What I’ve given you below is a comparison of two versions of the Nyungwe translation of John 18:3-8. On the left is the translation before the team check. On the right is the translation after the team check.
I’m afraid that I’m too bushed to give you a play-by-play on the choices that went into editing these six verses, but I will highlight a few of the interesting things that came out and if you are interested I can do some follow-up posts on these next month.
| RSV (for reference) | Comments |
| 3 * So Judas, procuring a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons. | 3 The draft identified four groups as going with Judas: soldiers, chief priests, Pharisees and guards.
The draft had them carrying rifles. This was changed to tools of war (i.e. spears and swords). |
| 4 * Then Jesus, knowing all that was to befall him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” | 4 We tried to create a little more drama in the text by backgrounding the first piece of information in a prepositional phrase. |
| 5 They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. | 5 We changed the EGO EIMI phrase so that it matched the other occurences in John. |
| 6 When he said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. | 6 The verb for “go back” was changed to a verb meaning “knocked back/reeling” and an ideophone was added to mimic the sound of them falling down. |
| 7 Again he asked them, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” | |
| 8 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he; so, if you seek me, let these men go.” | 8 Again the EGO EIMI was “harmonized.” |
My favorite change was the addition of the ideophone in verse 6. I’ve never been able to get my head around ideophones. But they are very common in Nyungwe and they make the difference between a flat text and one that gets everybody interested. It was gratifying to see how excited the translators became reading the text aloud with the addition of an ideophone.
Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most was working on information structure in the narratives. We did a lot of swapping clause and word order to put emphasis on the proper part of the sentence. It’s quite a challenge to understand the source text structure and try to bring out the same emphasis, backgrounding and highlighting in Nyungwe.
If you have questions, please feel welcome to ask.
That’s truly fascinating. I’m very happy to hear that ideophones are not being left out of the Bible translation. Times have clearly changed since Nida warned against their use! Thanks for posting this.
Mark, your blog looks fascinating. I wish I could follow you around to all the linguistic conferences. By the way, one of our Nyungwe riddle books has an ideophone for a title: Phaaa pfuta dooo! http://lidemo.net/biblioteca/resources/view/nyu/alfa/nyu_t000006.pdf
Re: getting your head around ideophones — your comments on the effect of the ideophone in this particular context sound a lot like what I have described in ‘Under the spell of ideophones‘.
And thanks for the link to that booklet! What’s the meaning of the riddle on the title page?
It is someone plastering a house. See the illustration on the first page for an example.
Phaa (holding the clay) pfuta (the clay hitting the wall) doo (the clay sliding down the wall).
I have many riddles in Nyungwe documented and a good number of them incorporate ideophones.
Another example that turned up in our translation is that when Jesus said, “I am” every stumbled backward and fell down kuti khoo.
[...] never had an easy relationship (Noss 1999), but the times may be changing. David Ker of Lingamish reports on a checking session in the ongoing Nyungwe bible translation project. In verse 6 of John 18, "[t]he verb for “go [...]