Rezolving Speling Ishues fore Baibel Namez

Scripture embodiment in a culture can be hampered by Bible proper names which are either difficult to pronounce or are too much influenced by a language of wider circulation (LWC), making the translation too foreign sounding. Completely transforming names to adapt to the host culture is not historically advisable or even possible in most cases, but working out the best possible spellings for Bible names in the host language has many difficulties.

Some difficulties are: 1) the influence and practices of LWCs; 2) past and current church traditions for names; 3) differing name-rendering approaches of source translations; 4) constraints or influences of original language pronunciations; 5) primary and secondary morphology effects of the original and host languages; 6) chance coincidence of biblical names with host language words with adverse meanings; and 7) phonological constraints of the host language—all these work together and against each other at times to complicate the process of transliteration or even translation of biblical names. This particularly applies to Hebrew Bible names, which are very numerous and often difficult.

This paper will explore specific examples from a number of language projects to illustrate problems and their possible solutions. The paper will present details of personal experiences and experiments by the author of various approaches to many aspects of this issue as well as published materials from others.