Addressing the challenge of transferring a writer’s world view: a case study of the translation of the book of Leviticus into Dholuo

Abstract

This study addresses the challenges of transferring the writer’s world view from a source audience to the target audience, especially in cultural themed matters as I take as my case study the translation of the book of Leviticus into Dholuo. This study is aware that bible translators of the issue of world view and how to establish equivalence at the world view level. It also looks into the recent happenings in the Bible Translation world with the advent of the digital world and care and steps that are taken to give the best translation while acknowledging the infallibility of man. Relevance theory and the search for equivalence and contextual clues dominate this research. For the source text, King James Version and Good News Bible and the latest version of Dholuo Bible was used in identify portions and expressions in the source text of Leviticus which suggest a significant world view element from the source culture and numbering them. It also involved identification of equivalent expression of the target text. These were analyzed to establish whether any efforts were made by the translators to establish the equivalence at the world view level. The author of this study is cognizant of the fact that translation methods have gone hi-tech with the digital age but when the edition of the Dholuo bible was being translated, the methodology would have been more prone to error.