Key terms are challenging and yet one of the most fun aspects of translation work. That is, communicating the ideas behind loaded terms like redemption, faith, holiness, baptism, forgiveness, etc, and then allowing the Gmz translators to discuss and come up with the best equivalent word or words in the Gmz language. It is not uncommon for such discussions to take on the tone of a good argument, and more often than not, we must move ahead with a “tentative translation” that no one is really happy with. Without fail, these same key terms resurface later in the text, as do the heated discussions, but each time we strive to make headway.
Such was the case with the term “holy” or “consecrated.” The people who originally planted the church among the Gmz in this area may have struggled a bit with this Biblical key term, but in the end, it was clear that they just stole the Amharic word and slipped it into the Gmz church vocabulary. This resulted in all the Gmz Christians knowing and using this Amharic word (qadus). However, I have drilled into my co-translators that I don’t want to take the easy way out in borrowing Amharic words unless we absolutely have to. Why? The Amharic word ‘qadus’ (holy) is a perfect example. The first time we encountered the term “holy” in the text of Luke’s gospel, I knew we were in for a can of worms, but it didn’t begin how I expected. You see, everybody knew the Amharic word “qadus” and so after a brief discussion amongst themselves, they all agreed and told me to type in “gashokwa.” But, not so fast, I knew the word “gashokwa” and its meaning (breath, spirit) was far from the semantic domain of “holy” or “consecrated.” Not to mention that it was the wrong part of speech (a noun when we needed an adjective). So, after a few questions, it became clear to me that, though everybody in the church had used the Amharic word “qadus” for more than seven years, none of them really had any idea what it meant – and that is EXACTLY the danger in borrowing key terms from foreign languages!
Good thing we don’t ever do that in English right? Well, how about an example a little closer to home? How many English Bible readers really know what the term “Christ” means? Christ (a loan-word from the Greek’s ‘Kristos’) was a technical term so rich in meaning that the English Bible translators couldn’t bear to dumb it down into just one English word. However, by stealing the Greek word, they locked away this treasure of meaning, hiding it from the average Bible reader and instead leaving the burden of communication on the shoulders of preachers and teachers. Now, the question I ask, in an extremely Biblically literate sub-culture like Christian America – how good of a job have our preachers and teachers done to fill in the meaning of this stolen key term? I would hope that none of you would say that ‘Christ’ is simply Jesus’ last name. But how many of you would speak of its connection to kingship, and more technically, the fulfiller of the Davidic covenant? Had the English Bible translators decided to translate ‘Christ’ as its literal meaning ‘The Anointed One,’ at least English readers of the Bible would have some place to start in discovering what it means to call Jesus by this royal title. With that said, the Gmz Bible translation, thus far, has followed suit with every other translation I have in front of me…we too have stolen the Greek work ‘Kristos.’ Does that make me a hypocrite?
Speaking of “hypocrite,” that’s another key term that we encountered recently in the translation office. When the Amharic word communicated nothing meaningful, I began giving examples of hypocrisy. “Let’s say that Larry doesn’t like it when whips are cracked right outside his house at night. So he yells and creates quite a stir to make sure the offending kids are properly punished and the annoyance stops. But then, one day, Larry makes a new whip and tries it out late that night. When his neighbors complain, he simply blows them off. That is a hypocrite. Or, let’s say, in volleyball Alake always yells at people when they just hit the ball over the net without setting him up for a good spike. “Three hits…three hits!” he yells every time. But, then when the ball comes for him to set up his teammate, he just hits it straight over. He is a hypocrite. Feeling good about my two examples, I looked up at my co-translators, all of which seemed less than impressed. They talked a bit but only came up with general statements like “bad person” or “liar.” So I looked at the deeper meaning of the Greek term “hupocrita” (yes, English stole this word from Greek, but, unlike “Christ,” the meaning of ‘hypocrite’ has become mainstream English). I remembered that the Greek word also might be translated as “pretend,” as an actor pretends to be someone or something else. So, changing my strategy, I explained how sometimes I pretend to be a lion when playing with Micah. I crawl around on the ground, circling him and roaring. Then, without warning I rush in and tackle him, while pretending to eat his belly. Before I even finished the description of my pretend game, Habtamu had thrown out a word that got the whole room buzzing. “That’s it! That’s it!” They said all together. This word worked with the lion, with Alake the volleyball fiend, and with Larry the whip cracker. After spending some good ten minutes on this one word, my co-translators burst into excitement and pride having found that their language can accurately capture this idea. And yet, another key term was discovered!
Unfortunately, the term for ‘holy’has not had such an “Aha” moment. After many discussions, I felt my co-translators had retrained their thinking as to what ‘qadus’ or ‘holy’ was, but we still hadn’t found anything that captured the ideas of either being “set apart” or “completely pure.” Even the tangible concept of being “set apart” is not simple in Gmz for in all the examples I tried, they just stated it literally “That bag of grain was placed by itself” or “that money was given to God.” Then one day, Habtamu, randomly threw out the suggestion “how about ‘daagahaats?’” I knew the word root meaning ‘good’ or ‘clean,’ but asked for explanation. He explained that after a woman gives birth, she is unclean for two months. At the end of this period, she then slaughters a chicken and is declared clean or ‘magahatsama.’ The term carries the idea of containing nothing impure, which is definitely an important concept within the key term ‘holy.’ Surprisingly, I tested to see if this term carried some meaning with regard to “set apart” or ‘consecrated,’ and although I didn’t get an enthusiastic reaction, I was not shot down either. So, we decided to run with it as a tentative solution and even now, after many more discussions, we are still tentatively settled on this word for ‘holy.’ However, my ears are always open for new possibilities. For example, I just learned that when a witch doctor declares a certain house to be a home of a powerful spirit, people must take their shoes off when entering. Next time we encounter the word ‘holy,’ I am going to ask about this cultural situation and why shoe removal is required. Is it because the ground is sacred? Holy? What word is used to say that?
The game of discovering key terms is not unlike playing hide and seek. We suspect there are useful terms hidden all around the language, and so we start by looking for careless hiders in the most obvious places (using Amharic words for direct translation). When this avenue is exhausted, we dig a bit deeper by giving example situations. Then, if some little bugger is tucked away really well, the seeker has got to start getting a bit more creative – with an ear always open to catch new words and concepts in everyday life.
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