Abstract
Since the Bible was intended by die first authors to be understood by all believers, it is important to have an idea of the extent to which different translations succeeded in this respect. The author noticed that some of the latest Bible translations in Southern Africa are inconsistent with respect to the translation policies they followed, sometimes translating according to the meaning, and sometimes literally, distorting the meaning. He then selected a number of theologically important terms from the Bible for the purpose of comparing the way those were translated in the different translations.Contribution: It was found that some of these translations, particularly the 1983 Afrikaans translation, the Venḓa translation of 1998, and the Xhosa translation of 1996, consistently translated according to the meaning, and two of them, to wit the latest Southern Ndebele and Zulu translations, very literal, and the rest somewhere in between these methods, sometimes translating quite literally, and sometimes more meaningfully, but generally not consistent.
Highlights
To what extent did the Bible translations into indigenous languages of Southern Africa produced since 1966 reflect the purpose of providing meaning-based translations?
Since the Bible was intended by die first authors to be understood by all believers, it is important to have an idea of the extent to which different translations succeeded in this respect
The author noticed that some of the latest Bible translations in Southern Africa are inconsistent with respect to the translation policies they followed, sometimes translating according to the meaning, and sometimes literally, distorting the meaning
Summary
To what extent did the Bible translations into indigenous languages of Southern Africa produced since 1966 reflect the purpose of providing meaning-based translations?. The author noticed that some of the latest Bible translations in Southern Africa are inconsistent with respect to the translation policies they followed, sometimes translating according to the meaning, and sometimes literally, distorting the meaning. He selected a number of theologically important terms from the Bible for the purpose of comparing the way those were translated in the different translations. With ‘the Southern African Indigenous Languages’ is meant Zimbabwean Ndebele (1978, referred to as NdeZ), Afrikaans (1983, referred to as Afr83), Northern Sotho (for which the term Pedi is used – 1992), Southern Sotho (referred to as Sotho – 1996), Xitsonga (1989, referred to as Tsonga), Swati (1996, referred to as Swati), Xhosa (1996, referred to as Xhosa), Venḓa (1998, referred to as Ve98), Southern Ndebele (2012, referred to as NdeS), and the most recent of all, the recently published Zulu translation (referred to as Zulu20). The 2020 Afrikaans translation is not discussed, since from the start it was intended to be a ‘direct’ rather than a meaning-based translation, the purpose being to provide an additional translation in Afrikaans in which the idiom and flavour of the original languages are preserved
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