The Shift of Addressee in Performative Bible Translation: The Case of Psalm 23 into Sesotho

The written version of Psalm 23 in Sesotho (an official Bantu language of South Africa) poses a problem in oral performance. The third person singular Sesotho pronoun o ‘he’ and the second person Sesotho pronoun o ‘you’ are differentiated only by tone – high tone on the third person and low tone on the second person. In an oral performance, however, readers tend to read verse 4c -5b with exactly the same tone as in the previous verses, verses 1-4b where the addressee is third person. Most of the readers of the Bible in Sesotho are unaware of this main shift, that is, moving from third person singular in 1-4[b] to second person singular in 4c – 5b, because tone is not marked in the Sesotho orthography. The changing of addressee (person) in Sesotho means changing of tone, so the failure of the readers to discern the shift creates a different meaning. This shift creates confusion for most of the Bible readers (both the lay persons and the clergy) in Sesotho. Therefore this paper seeks to address how can this issue be resolved through an adapted performative translation of Psalm 23 into Sesotho using a Complexity Theory approach.
The paper has the following sections (1) Psalm 23 in the Hebrew (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) and its translation in the 1909 and 1989 Sesotho Translations; (2) Defining Complexity Theory with Performance as underpinning concept; (3) A Performative Translation of Psalm 23 into Sesotho; and (4) Conclusions.