A project to translate the Bible into Jamaican Creole Patois is excepted to come to and end very shortly.
There has gone on always a lot of discussion if a Bible can be translated in a dialect. Some do find the dialect not a proper language worthy of the Word of God. There is the matter to consider when something may be looked at as 'slang' or when something should be considered as a deviation of or as an other language.
Do you consider American a dialect form of Queens English or as a different language? Is Scottish an acceptable language to translate a Bible to?
As some people think that Scots isn’t a real language, creoles aren’t seen as a language because they have a lot of similar features to English and to French.
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, with the result that they have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.
Its parent languages are the Colonial European Roman languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese) and Germanic languages (German, Dutch and English).
The terms criollo and crioulo were originally qualifiers used throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonies to distinguish the members of an ethnic group that were born and raised locally from those who immigrated as adults.
As a consequence of colonial European trade patterns, most of the known European-based creole languages arose in the equatorial belt around the world and in areas with access to the oceans, including the coastal regions of the Americas, western Africa, Goa and along the west coast of India, and along the coast of Southeast Asia up to Indonesia, Macau, the Philippines, Malaysia, Seychelles and Oceania.
Today the Bible is being translated in a language that is speaking to the locals.
Some example:
Luke 1:26-28
26 Wen Ilizibet did prignant fi siks mont, God sen ienjel Giebrel go a wan toun iina Gyalalii niem Nazaret, 27 fi kyari wan mesij go gi wan yong uman niem Mieri we neva slip wid no man yet. Mieri engiej fi marid Juozif, we kom from di siem famblili we King Dievid did bilang tu. 28 Di ienjel go tu Mieri an se tu ar se, “Mieri, me av nyuuz we a go mek yu wel api. Gad riili riili bles yu an im a waak wid yu aal di taim
While this is easy to understand, other extracts are less like English.
Luke 1:1-4
Tiyafilas Sa, Uol iip a piipl chrai fir ait dong di sitn dem wa apm mongks wi. Dem rait it dong siem wie ou dem ier it fram di piipl dem we did de de fram di staat, si di sitn dem wa apm an we priich di wod.
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Read more and see a video: Gad wod iina fi wi langwij!