A Critical Examination of the Translation Philosophy of the New Testament of the New Revised Asante-Twi Bible (2018)
By Yaw Worae
Abstract
Bible translation activities have been documented since the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian exile around the 5th century BCE. In Ghana, the earliest translation of portions of Scripture were in Ga in 1805. Translators of the Bible into mother-tongues overtly or covertly employ one or more of the philosophies used in Bible translation. This article examined the philosophy that underpinned the translation of the Asante-Twi Bible, a vernacular Scripture that is widely used by the Akan speaking people of Ghana. The researcher discovered that the two main theories of formal and dynamic equivalences have been employed where appropriate in the translation. However, there are a lot of passages (such as Jewish systems of measurements and dates) that call for using appropriate equivalences in the mother tongue to make the message of the New Testament understandable and unambiguous. The article also argues for the need for commentaries in the mother-tongue Bibles.
Author’s Bio
Yaw Worae is a PhD candidate of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. His research areas cover Bible translation studies and the correlation between Bible translation and Church growth in Ghana.