Some Basic Linguistics

One of the great problems I find in teaching biblical languages, or in explaining Bible translation to lay audiences, is that people don’t understand meaning very well. They assume that words have fixed, narrow ranges of meaning, and that if you search carefully, you can find a word or phrase to precisely represent that word in the target language.

Most of them have some idea that this might not be right, but that hasn’t seeped through to their practice. A few questions usually suffices to get the process started.

I’m embedding a video from Wycliffe Bible Translators (UK), or rather audio with a slide show, that does a good job with the basic concepts. This one doesn’t go in depth. What it does is clear a lot of the ground and get some basic structures in place. (HT: Kouya Chronicle.)