If you had walked into our translation office this morning, you would have found yourself in the middle of an intense discussion about graves. I know, I know, not your usual Tuesday morning conversation but when it comes to translation, everything's fair game.
It all began with a lesson on how to translate unknown ideas. Currently the translators are working on translating Luke 22-24 and one of the unknown ideas in those chapters is the tomb where Jesus was laid. Out here when someone dies, a grave is dug and that person is buried in the ground. However Luke specifically says that no one had been buried in the tomb where they put Jesus (Luke 23:53). From the perspective of the people out here this doesn't make any sense. Who reuses graves?
Thus began the discussion on how to explain what Luke meant. What kind of phrase could describe a tomb? The idea of using the word for 'cave' instead of 'grave' was suggested to help portray this idea. Most translators agreed with this but then the question came up, was Jesus buried in the cave? Did they dig a grave in there or did they carve the stone? What word should be used to describe this process? What words are available in their languages?
Although they didn't all agree on exactly how it should be translated, this discussion was a good learning process for dealing with unknown ideas.
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