Translating New Testament proverb-like sayings in the style of Nsenga proverbs
Christopher J Pluger
Master of Arts
with major in
Applied Linguistics
The Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, December 2014
Supervising Professor: Dr. Peter Unseth
This thesis identifies a collection of “proverb-like” sayings found in the Greek
New Testament, mostly in the words of Jesus, and analyzes some of the grammatical and
phonological features that characterize the collection. It also identifies grammatical,
phonological, and topical elements found in a collection of 270 proverbs in Nsenga (N.41;
ISO 639-3: nse), a Bantu language spoken in Zambia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.
After analyzing both the source language proverb-like sayings and the target language
literary style, this thesis presents an artistic, genre-sensitive translation of 40 New
Testament proverb-like sayings into Nsenga as proverbs, following the Literary
Functional Equivalence (LiFE) approach described by Wendland (2004; 2011; 2013).
This thesis seeks to inform and improve work done by the Nsenga Bible Translation
Project (NBTP) of Petauke, Zambia, as well as to serve as a model for other mothertongue
Bible translation projects around the world.