A comparative translation text analysis of the book of Song of songs in the Mbala And Mushindo Bemba Bibles
Date
2019
Authors
Mutale, Charles
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Zambia
Abstract
Translation of the Bible has played a very critical role in the evangelization Programmes of
the Christian Faith throughout the world and Zambia in particular. The translated Bibles have
provided an avenue for communication between divergent foreign languages and cultures. In
Zambia, however, some translated Bibles have been a bone of contention among Church
denominations as their members have sought to know which version was more accurate than
the other. For instance, The Bemba Christian speech community, belonging to different
church denominations, has had to choose between the Mushindo (KJV) Bemba version and
the Mbala (Douay-Rheims) Bemba version. In the same vein, the translated Bemba version
of the Bible used by the Catholic Church in Zambia is different from the Bemba version
preferred by the Protestant Church. This study sought to investigate the linguistic differences
and variations between the translation of the book of Song of Songs in the Mbala and
Mushindo Versions of the Bemba Bible. It is meant to provide an understanding into the root
causes of dissentions among the Christian users of the two Bemba versions. An intra-lingual
comparative analysis of the translated book of Song of Songs was carried out to establish the
differences and variations. The research employed Gideon Toury’s (1995) Descriptive
Translation Studies Theory (DTS) to critically examine the products of translation, the
processes used during translating and the intended function of the end product. In addition,
the study also looked at the challenges encountered during the translation exercise. Data was
collected qualitatively through document analysis and supplemented by interviews with
individual respondents. The respondents included 14 Christian adults purposefully selected.
Four of the respondents were translators and 10 were ordinary congregants from both the
Catholic Church and the Protestant Church respectively. The study area included Kasama and
Mbala. Data was analysed qualitatively. The findings of the study show that the translators of
the Mbala Bemba Bible used more of the target text norms than the Mushindo Bemba Bible
translators who were more inclined towards the source text norms. The results obtained show
that 38.5% of the strategies used to translate the Mbala Bemba Bible were direct procedures
as compared to 46.3% for the Mushindo version. As regards the oblique translation strategies,
the study discovered that the Mbala Bemba Bible scored 45.3% while the Mushindo Bemba
Bible had 32.6%. From the results, it is evident that the function of the Mbala version was to
domesticate the Bible so that the target text receivers could own the document while the
function of the Mushindo Bible was to foreignise the Bible so that the target text recipients
perceived the Bible as a foreign text written in their Language. Based on the above findings,
it is important to carry out more linguistic investigations on Bible translation to avert possible
dissentions among Church denominations in Zambia.
Key words: Mushindo Bemba Bible, Mbala Bemba Bible, Domestication, Foreignisation and
Intra-lingual.
Description
Keywords
Bible. Old Testament. Bemba--Versions.