Similarity and alterity in translating the orality of the Old Testament in oral cultures

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the orality of the Old Testament as a source text and orality as a feature of the target culture. This relationship involves both alterity, the assertion of distance of culture, and similarity (or familiarity), the assertion of proximity of culture (Sturge 2007). However, because orality does not involve a fixed set of universal features, the similarities and differences between the orality of the Old Testament and the orality of a target culture are examined using the insights of Biblical Performance Criticism (Rhoads 2012). In other words, the process involves not just the translation of performance but also translation for performance (Maxey 2012). These concepts are explored through a performance translation of a liturgical psalm (Psalm 24) into Sesotho, a Bantu language of Southern Africa.

Keywords:

• Bible translation
• orality
• alterity
• performance translation
• Sesotho
• Psalm 24

Acknowledgements

This work is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Jacobus A. Naudé UID 85902). The grantholder acknowledges that opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in any publication generated by the NRF supported research are those of the author, and that the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.

Notes on contributors

Tshokolo J. Makutoane is a senior lecturer in the Department of Hebrew at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. He studies orality as a feature of Bible translations into African languages.

Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé is a senior professor in the Department of Hebrew at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. She has been a consultant for Bible translators in Africa since 1992. She has published on the translation of biblical proverbs in African languages, religious translation in Africa, ideology and translation strategy in Bible translation, and on alterity, orality and performance in Bible translation.

Jacobus A. Naudé is a senior professor in the Department of Hebrew at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. He is a member of the Afrikaans Bible translation project for the South African Bible Society and serves on the advisory board of the Handbook of Translation Studies. He edited Contemporary Translation Studies and Bible Translations (2002), Language Practice: One Profession, Many Applications (2007), Socio-constructive Language Practice: Training in the South African Context (2008) and Bible Translation and the Indigenous (2009).

Notes

1. We are grateful to Mrs Moleboheng Lena Qhena, a Sesotho school teacher in Botshabelo (Free State, South Africa) for her assistance in analysing the poetic features of this performance translation of Psalm 24 in the light of the usual features of Sesotho poetry.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Jacobus A. Naudé UID 85902)