Ikho Poswayo, who is currently completing her BTh (Hons) at GWC, will be joining the college in 2022 as a junior lecturer. Ikho’s teaching focus will be in biblical studies and she will continue furthering her studies in biblical counselling. Here is an extract from an article titled “How the Original Languages Can Benefit the African Church” that Ikho wrote for The Gospel Coalition, Africa Edition, published in September 2021.
“I’ve had many instances where I have been thankful for having been taught the original (Bible) languages. One of those was when I wanted to memorise Psalm 46 in my own language. My hardcopy of the isiXhosa Bible is a reprint of the 1975 version. Thus it wasn’t long before I realised I didn’t know half of the vocabulary in the psalm. So I accessed the 1996 version. This was better. But even here I encountered words that required me to ask my family for their meaning. The problem was, I got different answers. Worse still, for some of the words my family weren’t even sure of the meaning. They could only translate the word when I read it in context. So, I decided to translate the psalm for myself from Hebrew to isiXhosa. This was a great joy.”
“Reflecting on the above experience, a couple of things came to mind. The first was the excitement of realising that there are nuances in Hebrew that were more easily translatable into isiXhosa than English…But it also highlighted the importance for translating from the original languages rather than from other translations.”