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Amharic interference in 'Afar translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Loren F. Bliese
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Extract

The 'Afar translation team of the Ethiopian Bible Society began in September 1976 and in the following two years completed about two-thirds of the New Testament. The team consisted of Alo Aydaahis, main translator; Guto Wuddo, assistant translator and tester, and Loren Bliese co-ordinator and exegete. Since English was difficult for the two 'Afar members of the team, the language used to translate from was the popular Amharic version being prepared by the Bible Society of Ethiopia. The use of Amharic as the source language resulted in interference in the 'Afar draft, as subsequent testing revealed.

Type
Articles Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 345 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1980

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References

1 Hayward, R. J., ‘Categories of the predicator in 'Afar, with especial reference to the grammar of radical extensions’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1976, p. 376Google Scholar.

For detailed descriptions of the various grammatical categories discussed in this paper see Bliese, Loren F., 'A Generative Grammar study of Afar’, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1977Google Scholar, being published with additions and revisions in 1980 as A Generative Grammar of Afar, Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications, Dallas.

2 The 'Afar transcription follows that of Didier Morin in ‘Le nom en Afar du sud’, BSOAS, XL, 1977, 2, 354–70Google Scholar. Only non-final stress is marked with ‘ver a short vowel and’ over a long vowel.

3 A common example of interference in translation from English to 'Afar is in the tendency to place relatives behind head nouns even when there is no reason. See Bliese, , ‘Bible translation from SVO to SOV languages in Ethiopia’, Folia Orientalia, xxi, 1980Google Scholar.