What is a centurion? and other translation complexities

 Jesus and the Centurion by Paolo Veronese, 1571

Here's a little taste of the complexities of Bible translation. We'll start with a simple verse like Matthew 8:5. "When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him." Sounds easy, right?

Here are some of the questions that I would ask while checking the Jita translation of that verse.

1. Who is "he" referring to? The closest referent is the leper from verse 4. But "he" actually refers to Jesus. Is this clear in the Jita translation?

2. What is Capernaum? A person, a country, a building? It's actually an inhabited settlement. But is it a town, a city, or a village? Should we include a map in our translation?

3. How do we spell Capernaum in natural Jita? The Jita language has no letter "c" by itself. And Jita has rules about every syllable having one consonant and one vowel (sometimes a long vowel). Finally, every Jita word ends with a vowel. Therefore, we get [Kaperinaawumu].

4. What is a centurion? It's a Roman military officer commanding about one hundred men who ranks under a tribune. This concept is totally foreign to Jita language and culture. How do we communicate the intended meaning? We could transliterate the Greek hekatontarkes. But that's not very helpful. We could use the entire long definition. But that breaks the flow of the passage. Maybe we should use a short phrase that captures the meaning. If we do that, should we also include a footnote with more explanation? Should we include an entry in the Glossary?

5. Some Bible versions put the words "appealing to him" in verse 6. What should we do?

6. I think the most interesting phrase is "came forward to him." The Jita language captures this meaning with one word, [^naamujaa-ko]. Literally it means, "and then he went to him there." The little ^ symbol in front of the word is a tone marker. Without the tone marker, the meaning would be "I went to him there this morning."

...and many, many more questions.

In the end, here's the verse in Jita,
Omwanya gunu Yeesu :eengiiye mu‑musi gwa Kaperinaawumu, omwangarisi umwi wa abhasirikare bha Echiruumi ˆnaamujaa‑ko.

Pray that the Jita people will read and understand this story about Jesus and the centurion. Pray that they would trust Jesus as the one who has power over sickness and power to grant salvation to everyone who has faith in him...even the Jita people!