The Importance of "Connecting": ATR and Translation

Wilfred Fon and Karl Greber wrote an article on ATR (i.e. African Traditonal Religion) in Cameroon a few years ago, and I cite here 2 paragraphs explaining some of how this intersects with Bible translation.

As we were translating the first portions of the New Testament into Lamnso’ the translators needed to decide on what Lamnso’ terms to use for translating such biblical terms as angel, devil, demon and the various activities of demons or evil spirits. So I organized a workshop for Christian leaders in which we sketched the way the Nso’ people traditionally view the spirit world and attempted to relate this to the view of the spirit world as revealed in the Bible. We soon found that even the most experienced Christian leaders were not always sure how to relate the cultural phenomena to the biblical picture. On the whole, the church had bypassed the task of interpreting the cultural picture from the biblical per-spective, leaving Christians to determine for themselves how to relate to the various traditions of their culture. The Lamnso’ term the churches had tradition- ally used for demon means literally “evil breath”. This is a literal translation of the Greek term for evil spirit. However, it is not a name of any one of the spirit beings known to the Nso’ traditionally. As a result, the biblical accounts about demons and their activities did not connect with the experiences of the Nso’ people in their daily world in which they deal with different spirit phenomena. During the workshop a cultural term for demon was proposed. This term was tested over several years and found to be much more relevant. It was then used in the final draft of the New Testament. 

However, proper terminology alone is not sufficient. It must be accompanied by a conscious effort of the church to teach Christian discernment and to equip the Christians to live victoriously in their culture that is permeated with fear of the spirit world. This entails teaching the biblical resources for spiritual warfare and ministering to the spiritually oppressed. It was this vision for the church which I started to share whenever I was approached over the years to speak to Cameroonian Christian workers about cultural issues in [Christian living]. 

Read the whole thing.