Re: The Lord's Prayer, a translation exercise

Ray Brown wrote:
> Yep - this can certainly be a problem if a conlang is attached to a
> con-culture.
Mine, for example, has no word for "father", except for the rather
technical term _nlannani_ which is literally something like
"co-mother".  They'd probably translate it as "Our mother in the divine
abode ..."  No word for "kingdom" either, but there is a general word
that can mean "state, empire, nation, kingdom, etc.", basically any
independent political unit.  They might use that, but it would probably
sound strange.  There wouldn't be much problem otherwise in translating
it, but the whole prayer would certainly strike them as odd.  It's not
up to the Divinities to forgive or condemn, or to provide for your
everyday needs.  They'll provide the rain and sun and so forth, but you
have to do the work of raising the crops yourself.  :-)  Of course, much
of Christianity would strike them as odd, so that's not so much a
problem.

> But Christian missionaries have had similar problems to these
Any Christian missionary to the Kassi would at least have the advantage
of a culture that already believes in a single (impersonal) creator
goddess.  They'd just have to convince them that they have direct access
to the Creator, and that (s)he's not as impersonal as they'd believed.
In fact, I suspect that some of the heretical offshoots of the later
Imperial age might well include one that involves a belief in a direct
connection to a not-so-impersonal Goddess.

> BTW the Greek words traditionally translated as "to sin" and "sin" are:
> hamartánein = to miss the mark [in spear throwing], to fail in one's
> purpose, to go wrong
> hamartía = failure, error
Interesting!

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