Bible gets a bush home (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Bible gets a bush home

By Linda Morris
June 4, 2005
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Bible-gets-a-bush-home/2005/06/03/1117568381381.html

Australia's first translation of the Bible from Genesis through to
Revelation into an indigenous language has been completed.

A final draft of the manuscript for the Kriol Baibul is now being
cross-checked in preparation for publication in 2007.

The project has been 27 years in the making.

Kriol is the language of 30,000 Aborigines from northern Australia and
is spoken as a first language in the region between the Katherine and
Roper rivers, the southern Gulf of Carpentaria and the Kimberley in
Western Australia. It is understood in northern parts of Western
Australia, and in Arnhem Land as a second or third language.

Peter Carroll, of the Australian Bible Society, said translations into
the many Aboriginal languages were complex.

"All translations are difficult when you are matching thought patterns
with two different cultures," Dr Carroll said.

"In English we use the word heart a lot and we attach to the body part a
lot of emotion. We talk of a loving God, one we can love with all our
heart, but in the Aboriginal language of Kunwinjku it's meaningless.

"Instead we say that you love God with all your insides or, if you like,
your inner being."

The Bible Society has published three editions in Kriol and 35 other
indigenous languages that contain extracts from the New Testament and
the Old Testament.

However, never before has a complete translation been attempted from
cover to cover into an indigenous language.