---
title: "Translating metaphors into Afrikaans in a source language-oriented translation — J 2006"
description: "The paper asks how metaphors should be handled in the New Bible in Afrikaans (NBA). 39 references."
authors: ["Van der Merwe, Christo H. J.", "Elisabet Hendriks"]
year: 2006
venue: "Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 33"
source: "https://spilplus.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/24"
doi: "10.5842/33-0-24"
licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus)"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/merwe-2006-translating-metaphors-afrikaans-source-language/"
---
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# Translating metaphors into Afrikaans in a source language-oriented translation of the Hebrew Bible

**Authors:** Van der Merwe, Christo H. J. and Elisabet Hendriks · **Year:** 2006 · **Venue:** Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 33 · **Licence:** CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.5842/33-0-24) · [PDF](https://spilplus.journals.ac.za/pub/article/download/24/140) · [DOI 10.5842/33-0-24](https://doi.org/10.5842/33-0-24) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2111223928)

**Citations:** 3 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper asks how metaphors should be handled in the New Bible in Afrikaans (NBA). The NBA is a source language-oriented translation meant for reading aloud in church and also for catechism, Bible study and private reading. The authors take Gutt's idea of a "direct or stimulus-based translation" as the project's skopos, set inside Nord's functionalist model of translation briefs. Their hypothesis is that a basic grasp of how metaphors work cognitively, and how they are rooted in culture, gives a defensible basis for interpreting and rendering them. They first list six common strategies for Bible metaphors: keep, keep and explain, turn into a simile, substitute, paraphrase, or omit. They argue that only keeping the metaphor fits this kind of translation. Using the ascriptive metaphor "God is a sun" (Ps 84:11) as a test case, they draw on conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending. This shows why paraphrases and similes lose meaning potential and bring in modern cultural models. The result is a strategy proposal that matters for any translation trying to keep source imagery while staying intelligible.

## Key points
- Afrikaans Bible history:
  - 1933 word-for-word version, close to the Dutch Statenvertaling, revised in 1953.
  - 1983 dynamic-equivalent version.
  - In the 1990s about one third of Afrikaans Bibles distributed by the BSSA were still 1933/53 editions.
- A BSSA conference in August 2001 led to an assignment for four types of translation (Versions 1–4). In 2003, a Version 2 and a Version 3 were produced.
- The six catalogued strategies are illustrated with concrete verses:
  - Ps 18:3, shield (metaphor kept).
  - Ps 23:5, oil on the head (kept and explained).
  - Ps 84:11, sun (simile).
  - Luke 13:32, Herod as fox, rendered as snake in Swati (substitution).
  - Ps 7:11, shield (paraphrase).
- A footnote compares seven modern renderings of Ps 84:11, including the 1983 Afrikaans Bible, the NET Bible and the Good News Bible. Each narrows "sun" to something like light, protector or king.
- The theoretical tools used are:
  - Lakoff and Johnson's view that metaphors shape everyday thought.
  - Conceptual blending of at least two input domains.
  - Idealized Cognitive Models.
  - Cultural models, such as the sun as a life-giving symbol of order for the psalmist versus a ball of fire for modern readers.

## Interesting ideas
- A metaphor blends at least two conceptual domains, so swapping it for a literal phrase or simile discards part of its meaning potential rather than restating it.
- The same image activates different cultural models for different readers (ancient sun as order and life versus modern sun as a light source), and translators unknowingly import their own.
- Lining up several existing renderings of one verse exposes how each one narrows the source, which makes a cheap diagnostic of what information is lost.
- The authors derive the handling of figures from an explicit brief (skopos) rather than from case-by-case taste, which makes every choice defensible.
- The paper asks the reader to infer the intended sense of a metaphor in context, treating its meanings as weak implicatures, rather than spelling them out.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (frames): Figurative predications like "X is a sun" could be stored as links between two frames rather than flattened to one literal role, so later reasoning keeps the open inferences.
- **I2** (world): Knowledge-graph entries for concepts could carry context- or era-tagged cultural associations, so the world model does not silently assume a modern reading.
- **I3** (learn): When several witness parsers or LLM teachers disagree on a figurative sentence, comparing their outputs side by side can flag spots where each loses meaning, instead of just voting.
- **I4** (back): Generation and translation through the meta-world could take an explicit brief (literal-faithful vs. reader-friendly) that decides whether metaphors are kept, explained or paraphrased, logged for explainability.
- **I5** (frames): The implicature module could treat metaphor senses as ranked weak implicatures with confidence, rather than a single forced literal paraphrase.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) · [Machine translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/machine-translation/)

Topics: [🕎 Hebrew & Aramaic](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/hebrew-aramaic/) · [🐪 Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) · [🧷 Idioms & multiword expressions](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/multiword-expressions/)

## Institutions

- [Stellenbosch University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/stellenbosch-university/) — University, Stellenbosch, South Africa · 13 works · 24,025 citations

## Cite

Cite as: Van der Merwe, Christo H. J. and Elisabet Hendriks. 2006. Translating metaphors into Afrikaans in a source language-oriented translation of the Hebrew Bible. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 33.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{j2006translating,
  title = {{Translating metaphors into Afrikaans in a source language-oriented translation of the Hebrew Bible}},
  author = {Van {der Merwe, Christo H. J.} and Elisabet Hendriks},
  booktitle = {Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 33},
  year = {2006},
  doi = {10.5842/33-0-24},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5842/33-0-24}
}
```

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## References

39 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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