Sometimes when translating you really feel like the force of a word in the source language is lost. Somehow the “umph” goes missing. Try as you might to recapture the potency or the succinctness of an expression it is sometimes not possible and you are left with a feeling of let-down.
I had that feeling when translating the phrase “behold, the lamb of God that comes to take away the sin of the world.” Specifically we were looking for a way to translate “lamb.” The Mwinika people are familiar with sheep but not to the extent of developing any particular sub-set of sheep-related terminology. Neither do the Mwinika make any particular association between lambs and sacrifices. The best we could find was a simple phrase like “the child of a sheep.” The phrase works … BUT… it lacks “umph.” Somehow, in my mind, the phrase “behold the child of a sheep of Muluku that comes to take away the sins of the world” is a let down. While all the content is accounted for, I still get the feeling that something has been lost in translation.