Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver is a Word Spoken at the Right Time

This comparison of metaphor translations in four Hausa and six Swahili bibles identifies different methods of metaphor translation. In the focus are metaphors containing entities, which are part of the biblical cultures, but not of Hausa or Swahili speaking areas versus metaphors involving terms that Hausa and Swahili speakers are familiar with. A look at metaphors from different semantic fields (human body, animals, botany, inorganic nature, material culture, social culture) investigates if certain translation methods dominate in a particular semantic field.

Henrike Firsching studied African Linguistics and was a PhD student at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS).