Sometimes things don’t communicate well across languages, or if they do communicate, it is not always what the speaker had in mind. In the translation of God’s word that is something you have to be looking out for. Take the story of Jesus calling his early disciples as an example (Matthew 4:18-19, Mark 1:16-17, and also Luke 5:10). “And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men’.”
In the Mwinika language the common term for fisherman is “namaiipha ihopa” which means literally “killer of fish.” In this passage the idea is that Jesus is telling Simon and Andrew “whatever you did with the fish, now you will change and do that with people.” Well, for the Mwinika, what they did with the fish was kill them. So now we need to say they will change and do that same thing with people. “Follow Me, and I will make you killers of men.” Hmmm?? Somehow that doesn’t seem to communicate the idea that Jesus had in mind. In the end we translated this verse as: “As you previously searched and tried to find fish so now you will search and try to find men.”
[The picture is of Mwinika fishermen on the beach inspecting their catch.]