This last week we were translating the portion in Exodus 26 that talks about the lampstand of pure gold that was to be made for the tabernacle. I would prefer to call it the “lampstand of pure headaches” on account of the difficulty in translation. Going into this passage I had no idea it was so complicated. The whole idea of an ornate lampstand is already foreign enough, never mind throwing in concepts like “pure hammered gold” and “calyxes from the flowers of an almond tree”. I don’t recall having ever heard of a calyx in English before. How am I supposed to translate something I don’t even understand in my own language? As I venture further into translation, I have found the Bible is full of technical terms that I had never thought of before.
Well, in case you are like me and not up on your botanical terms, apparently a calyx is the green leafy bottom part of a flower. Some call it the bud. With the help of this Hibiscus flower in the picture I found out that the Mwinika people call it “ekwikhwi.” The petals of the flower are things they call “dhothapalapuwa.” We are still on the hunt for what to call an almond tree. So far nobody has recognized the pictures of it to know what to call it. Oh well, we’ll keep trying!