Time for a Review of the Bokyi Bible? Some Sociolinguistic, Orthography, and Discourse Concerns

The complete Bible in Bokyi was dedicated in 1985. It could be argued that the translation product to a large extent met the needs of Bokyi people, in view of an understanding of the Bokyi speech community and the strategic alternatives from which those who worked on it had to choose. This reflection investigates some of these needs that may have informed the choices that were made before and during the actual translation process which resulted in the product as we have today in Bokyi. This investigation revolves around three major concerns: sociolinguistics, orthography, and discourse, as they affect current scripture engagement effort in Bokyi. It reveals, for example, that the generous but unnatural use of the additive morpheme 'ne' in some Biblical narratives, the choice of Osokom as Referent dialect and unique symbols for Bokyi phonemes /yi/ for the high front unrounded vowel [i] and /i/ for [e], as well as strategies for marking grammatical tone with the slash (/), hyphen (-), and asterisk (*), while creative, may not be without attendant drawbacks that negatively affect current scripture engagement efforts in Bokyi. The reflection shows that although these concerns may stand as threats and constraints to the Bokyi project, they also provide stakeholders in Bokyi the opportunity to turn them into strengths, which could result in an improved translation product for speakers of Bokyi.

Keywords: Bokyi Bible, sociolinguistics, orthography, discourse, scripture engagement, stakeholders, translation product.