The Translation of Sacrificial Rituals from the Bible into the Native Languages of Central Africa

The Bible contains many sacrificial rites. Some are evoked within the framework of the sacrificial system of worship celebrated in the temple (holocausts, etc.), while others, which are not very usual (such as the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11), are mentioned here and there in the corpora of both the Old and New Testaments. For a Bible translator working in the most symbolic and traditional cultures of Central Africa, the translation of the biblical text does not consist of a simple transposition of words from the Hebrew or Greek language to African languages. In a mediation process, the translator draws from the language of the translation the available categories to adapt the forms of representations to be translated. How do translators working in this region represent the sacrificial categories of the Old Testament and New Testament in quality translations into native languages? In this presentation, we present the results of surveys conducted on four tribes of the Democratic Republic of Congo: the Manianga, the Yansi, the Ekonda and the Nande.