Canon Jonas Allooloo, left, Bishop Benjamin Arreak, Bishop Andrew Atagotaaluk and Rev. Joshua Arreak prepare an Inuktitut translation of the Bible at the Canadian Bible Society’s Translation Office in Kitchener, Ontario, on November 23, 2001.
NUNAVUT, NVT—Readers of Inuktitut can now read the Bible in their own language thanks to the Canadian Bible Society (CBS).
The translation office in Kitchener, Ontario, worked with Anglican Church leaders from the Diocese of the Arctic for the past 30 years to produce the Inuktitut Bible. The New Testament translation, started in 1978 and finished in 1991, is now in its fifth printing. The full Bible, including the recently finished Old Testament, was dedicated in Nunavut in 2012.
“It’s taken so long because the translators are busy parish priests,” says Hart Weins, CBS director of Scripture translations. “Only a month or two out of the year were devoted to the translation work itself.”
Wiens and his team help make sure translations meet CBS standards by providing tools and resources. “We check the final result to see if the translation was communicating what was intended,” says Wiens. With the Inuktitut Bible, translators used a “functional equivalence” model which, instead of a literal translation, passed on the meaning of the scripture passage by incorporating native culture and idiom.
Wiens says the tribal nature of the Old Testament narrative fit the Inuit culture. But sometimes that fit was a challenge. He recalls trying to translate 2 Samuel 10:10, which talked about King David’s two sons Joab and Abishai.
“In Inuktitut there’s no generic word for brother. It’s either ‘older brother’ or ‘younger brother.’ We needed to know which term to use.
A call to Kitchener and a check through commentaries and other resources revealed Abishai was older. “This particular challenge had to do with the nature of their language,” says Wiens. “We couldn’t produce an exact form from the original.”
Wiens says there was “lots of relief and celebration” at the dedication ceremony. “I didn’t feel it as intensely as the translators themselves. Retired Anglican bishop Benjamin Arreak said it felt like a weight was lifted from his shoulders,” says Wiens.
