Trends and Patterns In The Translation of The Swahili Bible

Professor Mojola, in his book Issues in Bible Translation (2019), notes that Swahili Bible translation was pioneered by Johann Ludwig Krapf of the CMS (Church Missionary Society) in Kenya, Bishop Edward Steere of the UMCA (University Missionary to Central Africa) in Tanzania and George Lawrence Pilkington in Uganda. Johann Ludwig Krapf arrived on the East Africa Coast in1844, His grammar and dictionary of Kimvita Swahili as well as his draft of the Kimvita Swahili New Testament (1846) laid a firm foundation of further linguistic studies of these languages and for Bible translation in the various Swahili dialects. Bishop Edward Steere undertook the enormous task of translating the entire Bible into Kiswahili. Similarly, in his research paper on Biblical Translation of Early Missionaries in East and Central Africa, Villanova, (2006) asserts that Krapf and other missionaries in general laid a good foundation and standard to emulate for future Kiswahili Bible and other local languages written sources intended for translation. The Kiswahili Bible translations came in as follows; The Old Testament in Kiswahili -1891, Chuo Cha Maagano ya Kale - 1914, Swahili Roehl Bible-1937, The Holy Bible in Swahili, Union Version-1952 and Biblia Habari Njema - 1996. This paper seeks to explore the trends and Patterns of Bibles translated into Kiswahili from1846 to the present from a historical perspective. The paper rests on the premises that the translations have been influence by the ideological worldview of the translators.
KEY WORDS: Trends, Patterns, Translation, Kiswahili, Bible