One of the things which amazes us is this: most of us Jamaicans use Jamaican Creole most of the time; however, whenever many of us hear about the Jamaican Bible, for some reason or another, we associate the language, and hence the translation project, with vulgarity! This association was illustrated in one of our newspapers' editorial cartoons of a pastor reading, in absolute horror, the Jamaican translation of the Christmas Narrative. This is what the minister read: "An' memba de prophet sey de virgin a goh breed an' a bwoy pickney a goh bawn! Dem a goh call him JEEZAS..."
As one would expect, the congregation was equally horrified when they heard the word "breed"!
We are not aware of one speaker of Jamaican Creole who uses the Jamaican to express nothing but vulgarity. In fact, our impression is that we express vulgarity less than 5% of the time. It seems unreasonable, therefore, to conclude that the Jamaican Bible will be replete with vulgarity. Nonetheless, in order to put your fears to rest, the Bible Society assures you that:
"The text in Jamaican will not be loose, laughable, vulgar or slangy; at the same time, it will not be rigid and unnatural."
Vulgarity can be and is expressed in any of the world’s 6000 + languages. But it is important to remember that what is vulgar is the use to which a language is being put by individual speakers and NOT the language itself. Jamaican Creole --up until now—has been limited to certain domains in Jamaican society (dub poetry, dance hall music, most informal and intimate conversations, etc.). In some of those domains, vulgarity is doubtless more common than in others, such as academic discourse, education, the press, serious literature and sermons, domains which in Jamaica have traditionally belonged to English. This can give the impression that Creole is used more frequently to express vulgarity.
ReplyDeleteBut now Creole is acquiring a new domain, that of Scripture, and I have no doubt that Jamaica’s heart language will be found worthy of the task. And soon Jamaicans will hear the Bible in a new way, not in the language they learn in school, but in the one they learn at home, in the one that binds them in their Jamaicanness, the one that reminds them that they share a common history of agony and victory, the one they use in those warmer, less academic moments. And they will hear the Bible as they never have before.