The Zanaki translators do their work in the Zanaki language, and then create a literal, word-for-word Swahili translation of their Zanaki translation for me to read. I can read Zanaki a bit, but the Swahili is a must for me to understand it. They can do the backtranslation into Swahili quite quickly with a computer program that helps with this task, so it's not that much work for them.
As I was reading the Swahili translation of Luke 7 (the section in which Jesus meets up with a funeral procession of a widow's only son and Jesus raises the young man back to life), it said, "And the widow walked with many people of the town." Now, true, she was walking and she was accompanied by many people of her town, but a red flag went up for me. In Swahili, the phrase "to walk with" is a euphemism for "to sleep with" (which is the English euphemism for the same thing). I wasn't sure if it had the this meaning in Zanaki or not, so made a note to ask the translators.
When we sat down to discuss their translation of Luke 7, I asked Shem and Futakamba (the Zanaki translators) if this sentence could be understood any way other than just that there was a widow walking alongside the coffin with her neighbors. At first they said no, there was no problem with it, and didn't quite understand why I was asking. Then I asked again, "Does the phrase 'she walked with many people' mean anything other than walking by foot?" They started laughing and said, "Oh no! We have to change that right now! It is probably okay in Zanaki, but too many people know Swahili and might think she had slept with every man in the town!"
Yeah, it's always good to double-check Scripture drafts before publication...
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