Bible translated into Aboriginal language (fwd)

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Bible translated into Aboriginal language

[Transcript - This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around
Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.  You can also listen to the story in
REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.]

AM - Saturday, 5 May , 2007  08:26:07
Reporter: Anne Barker
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1915156.htm

ELIZABETH JACKSON: It's the world's oldest book, but it's taken 2,000 years
to translate the complete Bible into an Aboriginal language.

But today in Katherine, in the Northern Territory, the Anglican Church will
launch the first full Bible in Kriol.

It's a project that's taken nearly 30 years, as Anne Barker reports.

(sound of the Lord's Prayer being said in Kriol)

ANNE BARKER: That's the Lord's Prayer in Kriol. Originally known as Pigeon
English, it's now the most widely spoken Indigenous language in Australia.

(sound of the Lord's Prayer being said in Kriol)

Thirty-thousand people speak Kriol as their first language, from western
Queensland, across the Top End, to the Kimberley in Western Australia. But
until now the many churchgoers among them, like Michael Miller, have never
been able to read the entire Bible in Kriol.

MICHAEL MILLER: Kriol important to me, because it is my language. English
very hard for me. Only Kriol I understand.

ANNE BARKER: How often do you read the Bible?

MICHAEL MILLER: I read Bible every day and every night.

ANNE BARKER: Today, more than 100 years after the first Christian
missionaries arrived in Arnhem Land, the Anglican Church is launching
Australia's first complete Bible in an Indigenous language.

MARGARET MICKAN: We've managed to do the whole Bible, which is pretty
amazing when you think of some of the topics covered in the Old Testament.

ANNE BARKER: It's a project that's taken nearly 30 years and 100
translators, and one of its coordinators, Margaret Mickan, says despite the
similarities with English, it's been no easy task.

MARGARET MICKAN: Because of the type of language Kriol is, which is a modern
Aboriginal language which grew out of English and Aboriginal languages, it
sometimes sounds as if Kriol words are English words, but often they have a
different meaning. And so we'd have to be careful on both sides, both that
we don't just think 'Oh this is the same as the English word' and translate
that. And so it's a complex job still.

(sound of the Bible being read aloud in Kriol)

ANNE BARKER: Perhaps the biggest challenge was to translate the Bible not
just literally, but culturally, to give it an Indigenous context.

In the 23rd Psalm, for example, the shepherd minding his sheep became a
stockman mustering cattle.

(sound of the Bible being read aloud in Kriol)

And one linguist, Peter Carroll, says even the phrase "to love God with all
one's heart" threw up a challenge.

PETER CARROLL: The Gunwinggu people use a different part of the body to
express emotions, and they have a word that is, broadly translated,
"insides". And so that to love God with all your heart was to want God with
all your insides. And it was that use of the word "insides", not the word of
"heart", that established the right connection with emotions and made the
translations effective.

So the translator really needs to understand both languages and both
cultures.