Author Archives: Wayne Leman

Linguist, Bible translation consultant, grandpa (of 10), sometimes a poet, incurable punster.

Is the Pope Catholic?

August 29, 2010 – 5:20 pm

Have you ever noticed that some questions don’t ask for information (which is the default purpose of questions)? Instead, while they have the form of a question, their purpose in communication is to emphatically state something. Such “questions” have traditionally been called rhetorical questions. (Later added note: “rhetorical” does not mean there is no meaning [...]

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Psalm 80

August 16, 2010 – 4:00 am

The psalm for the day in our worship service this morning was Psalm 80. The version we read from in our church bulletin seems to be an earlier edition of the NRSV, one with capitalized letters beginning names, pronouns, and relative pronouns referring to deity. As we read the psalm this morning I noted several [...]

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Son of Man

July 20, 2010 – 4:40 pm

Jesus called himself (in Aramaic) the Son of Man. Surely he was taking that title from the books of Daniel and Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. What does the title Son of Man mean? What does it mean to different readers of English translations of the Bible? If it has little, if any, meaning to [...]

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Which languages #2 – idioms and metaphors

July 11, 2010 – 5:09 am

Thank you to each of you who listed languages you speak besides English. Idioms and metaphors present special complications for translation, including Bible translation. Idioms and metaphors are not not likely to be understood by a speaker of another language if translated literally to that language. For instance, if I said in Cheyenne Enehpoese ma’eno, the [...]

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Which languages?

July 1, 2010 – 5:49 pm

For some future posts it would help me to know a little more about your experience with other languages. Please tell me which languages, other than English, you are fluent enough in so that you could understat a fair amount of the language heard and can carry on a basic conversation in that language. If, [...]

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Isaiah 53 – hip hop performance

June 28, 2010 – 5:13 pm

New Living Translation (NLT) Here’s another powerful video by ALERT. It’s a hip hop reading of Isaiah 53 from the NLT, produced by GRIP outreach to youth in Chicago. These readings from the NLT, set in a musical style that’s familiar to these youth, speak to them in a fresh, relevant way.

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Bible translation foundations – #2 nouns and

June 24, 2010 – 7:36 pm

Thanks to everyone who commented on my test paragraph in the preceding post. Everyone had good suggestions for improvements. Most, I think, recognized that it was strange English to have the name of my wife repeated so often and felt it would be better English to have pronouns refer to her more often. I agree. [...]

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Bible translation foundations – nouns and

June 21, 2010 – 6:14 pm

This is a test. This is only a test. This is only a test about English. If this were an emergency, or a test about any other language, you would be notified. Please read the following paragraph: My wife’s name is Elena. In 2000 Elena was bitten by a deer tick. Elena developed a rash [...]

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Bible translation foundations – word order

June 15, 2010 – 3:59 am

How closely should English Bible translations follow the word order in the biblical language texts?

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Bible translation foundations – collocations

June 8, 2010 – 2:56 am

I am fascinated by the varying lexical collocations different languages have in their linguistic toolkits. In English we use the metaphor of distance or travel to refer to time. For instance, in English we can say that some romantic episode is “past” or that my birthday will “come” soon. But English does not collocate time [...]

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