A Critical Examination of the Translation Philosophy of the Asante-Twi Bible

Abstract

Bible translation activities have been documented since the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity in the period of the 5th century BCE (Before the Common Era). In Ghana, the earliest translation of portions of Scripture was in Ga in 1805. Bible translation into mother tongues overtly or covertly employs one or more of the philosophies known in translating the Bible. This article examined the philosophy that underpinned the translation of the Asante-Twi Bible, a mother-tongue Scripture that is widely used by the Akan-speaking people of Ghana. Two texts (Acts 1:12 and Hebrews 12:1) were examined exegetically through the lens of mother tongue biblical hermeneutics. 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. Keywords: Bible translation, theories of translation, skopos theory, functional equivalence, formal equivalence, Asante-Twi Bible, mother tongue biblical hermeneutics.