GENERAL WORDS FOR SACRIFICE IN SUPYIRE

key term “sacrifice” in the Bible. Would their use not lead to syncretism? In response to a similar issue, Goerling 315 outlines two approaches as unacceptable: 1. an avoidance of all religious words as a rigid principle because of their associations with concepts which convey meanings that seem incompatible with Christian meaning; 2. an uncritical acceptance of traditional religious words as fully usable to express the Gospel. The question to consider in each case is whether there is enough common ground in the use of a word for it to communicate the message of Bible relevantly without causing a significant distortion? As noted above p.56, the two words can be used in the same sentence to refer to the same action. However this does not mean that they are necessarily synonyms in every context. Indeed it seems that sÃraga can be used in a much wider range of contexts than sun. When the word sun is mentioned, it immediately brings to the mind of the Supyire listener the whole scenario of animistic worship: fetishes, ancestors and spirits. It does not collocate with Kile the high God. The question arises whether this is a collocational clash only for Christians who may react strongly against using any word associated with animism in the translation of the Bible. However, all research to date points to it being a collocational clash for Supyire across all sections of the community. So sun should not be used in translation in connection with sacrifices to God, but it would appear to be very suitable for occasions in the Bible when mention is made of sacrifices to local, pagan deities. S Ã raga , unlike sun, has a very wide range of meaning. Although the Supyire themselves do not sacrifice to God, they have sufficient contact with Islam to be aware that others do. To collocate sÃraga with Kile would not be shocking to Supyire ears in the way that collocating sun and Kile would be. The wide semantic range of a word can constitute another problem for the translator, that is to limit the reference to the type of sacrifice found in the Bible. This problem in the case of sÃraga will often be immediately resolved by the participants mentioned in the immediate context, for example in the introduction to 315 Goerling, Criteria for the Translation of Key Terms in Jula Bible Translations, p.29. Leviticus, Yahweh said to Moses: “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When any of you brings an offering to the LORD ... ” Lev 1:2. In other cases in Lev 1-7, some device will be needed to specify the different types of sÃraga. This could be done either by a descriptive phrase or a comparison to delimit either the form or function of each sacrifice see Wendland ’s suggestions numbers 5 and 6 above, p.127. These solutions however have the disadvantage of producing long and cumbersome phrases. These are awkward to handle naturally in translation, especially in the case of key terms, such as sacrifices, that may be repeated several times in a text. A better solution appears to be to create neologisms, new compound nouns with sÃraga as one of the components. This has the advantages that it is short and neat, and that it is a device used very commonly in Supyire. It would therefore add to the naturalness of the translation.

7.4 FORM OR FUNCTION

Given the need to create suitable compound nouns, the next question to tackle is whether the compounds should reflect the form or the function of the different sacrifices. A Survey of English Translations It is instructive to look at how translators into English have treated the five sacrifices. The table below sets out how ten versions have handled them. Figure 18: Five sacrifices in Leviticus 1-7: translations in English versions hlu hjnm ymlv tafj va KJV burnt sacrifice meat offering 316 peace offering Sin offering trespass offering NASB burnt offering grain offering peace offering Sin offering guilt offering RSV burnt offering cereal offering peace offering Sin offering guilt offering NRSV burnt offering grain offering sacrifice of well-being sin offering guilt offering 316 Meat here is used in the archaic sense of food. NIV burnt offering grain offering fellowship offering sin offering guilt offering TEV burnt offering offering of grain fellowship offering sin offering repayment offering GW burnt offering grain offering fellowship offering offering for sin guilt offering NCV whole burnt offering grain offering fellowship offering sin offering penalty offering NLT whole burnt offering grain offering peace offering sin offering guilt offering REB whole- offering grain- offering shared- offering purification- offering reparation- offering In the cases of hlu and hjnm, all these translations have opted to translate an aspect of the form of the sacrifice. For the hjnm it is the material offered, the grain that is highlighted, while for the hlu it is rather the means of disposition which is in focus the animal is burnt, or the whole animal is offered to God, or both of these. While they give the reader an idea of what happened, they give little or no hint of the reason for the sacrifice. As for the latter three sacrifices, while the translators have not translated the form, it appears that the majority of them have not made a significant effort to accurately reflect the function either. They have rather fallen victim to what Carson calls the root fallacy. He writes, “One of the most enduring of errors, the root fallacy presupposes that every word actually has a meaning bound up with its shape or its components. In this view, meaning is determined by etymology; that is, by the root or roots of a word.” 317 The root of ymlv is lv, “be complete” which has the cognate olv, “peace”; tafj in many contexts means “sin”, and va often means “guilt”. Hence the translations peace offering, sin offering and guilt offering have risen to prominence as a result of mere word associations. The best that can be said for them is that they are connected in some general way to the functions of Israelite sacrifice; it is concerned to deal with the effects of sin and guilt and to bring peace with God. But they are much too general and do not relate to the distinctive functions of the sacrifices in question. The one translation surveyed in figure 18 which consistently avoids the root fallacy is the Revised English Bible REB, which carefully seeks to reflect the 317 Carson, D.A., Exegetical Fallacies, Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1996, p.28.