Translating Jonah's narration and poetry into Sabaot : towards a participatory approach to Bible translation (PABT)

[摘要] Recent developments in the field of translation studies have shown that a singletranslation of the Bible cannot be used for all the functions for which people may need atranslation of the Bible. Unlike the case in the past when new versions of the Bible wereviewed with suspicion, it is now increasingly acknowledged that different types of theBible are necessary for different communicative functions. While many Africancommunities have only a pioneer mother tongue translation of the Bible, Scripture usereports indicate that in some situations, the mother tongue translations have not been usedas it was intended. The writer of this dissertation supports the view that some of theChristians in their respective target language communities do not use available mothertongue translations because they find them to be inappropriate for their needs. In the lightof functionalist theories of translation, it is held in this dissertation that people who findexisting translations to be unsuitable for their needs may need special alternativetranslations that are precisely designed to address their needs. The challenge, however, ishow to identify the specific type of the alternative translation. Although the need foralternative versions of the Bible has been widely acknowledged, very few studies havebeen carried out on strategies for designing and producing functional and acceptablealternative translations that are also directly based on the biblical source texts. This studyrepresents part of the necessary effort to identify theoretical strategies for designing andproducing alternative translations with special functions.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University